The Disorderly Princess and the Fiery Steed
by gsteemso
Summary: Hinata is too shy for her own good. Ranma is too brash for his. They live in different universes and will never meet. How the heck did they come to be helping one another?
1. Prologue

**The Disorderly Princess and the Fiery Steed**

A Naruto / Ranma ½ crossover  
© 2009–10 by gsteemso

Prologue

Author's Note (updated Weds. 2009/02/25): This was inspired by a number of stories where a ninja at the heart of the Naruto storyline, generally Naruto or Sakura, finds they are either the reincarnation or the jinchūriki of Saotome Ranma. It occurred to me to wonder: Why would it necessarily be one of the main characters? For that matter, why would Ranma arrive in one piece and talking coherently? He's **dead**. Then it further occurred to me to wonder, what would happen if he wasn't dead and in the past, but instead the link went both ways?

Not my characters. Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi, a man who appears to really hate his own characters, and Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

* * *

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* * *

_Konoha, the Village Hidden in the Leaves, around eleven years after the Fourth Hokage died defeating the Nine-Tails:_

Hyūga Hiashi, head of one of the village's most powerful clans, was in a good mood. Three years previously, he had assigned a researcher named Gozoshi, who was skilled with sealing techniques, to investigate ways to bolster a child's mental strength. Even back then, it had been painfully clear that his elder daughter Hinata was not assertive enough for the position of Clan Heir that she held through right of birth. While he was not a very nice man, he was willing to go to great lengths to ensure neither of his daughters would have to be branded with the Caged Bird seal used to control the subordinate Branch House of the Hyūga. Today he had finally received a report back on the sealwright Gozoshi's progress.

The end result of the man's years of research, he claimed proudly, had been the discovery that people's spirits or souls were complicated things that existed in more than one universe at a time, and that the links between these "other selves" in each universe could be strengthened artificially.

It would later be discovered that he had made a lot of this up because he liked the way it sounded, but since it apparently worked anyway, he hadn't been inclined to dig deeper.

In any case, almost as much time had been needed to find a way to filter out useless other selves like fungi, cockroaches and Bible salesmen as had been needed for the original breakthrough, but today the crusty old geezer Gozoshi had been able to report an incontrovertible success. He had taken a Branch House child who'd recently had the misfortune to be born with no higher brain functions — effectively a vegetable — and used the technique to connect him with a baby in another universe, and the connection had kick-started his mind such that he was now acting like a normal newborn. The old sealwright had kept close watch on the young family for the next three months, and there seemed to be no ill effects that anyone could see; indeed, the baby seemed uncommonly happy and well-adjusted.

Hiashi had sufficient overconfidence in Gozoshi's abilities that he had authorized the use of the new technique on Hinata. He'd worried briefly that his late wife might not have approved, but the knowledge that he could otherwise very well be forced to relegate the girl to the Branch House in a few years led him to feel there was no other way.

* * *

Hinata blinked owlishly after the departing form of her father. She was such a disappointment to him that she was to undergo a mind-altering sealing technique? She knew he was never pleased with her progress in anything, but she'd never dreamed she was **that** big of a failure. She stubbornly held back the tears, and with a pale but expectant expression, turned to the ancient Branch House retainer who would apparently perform the technique on her.

"Right this way, young miss," said the old man, in a way that gave her a strong impression he wasn't at all comfortable dealing with children. He then led her to a highly secure part of the clan compound that she'd never been into before. They passed through a series of doors and twisty little hallways lined with small work areas, all of which were sealed to be impenetrable even by the clan's White Eyes blood limit; and finally came to a stop in front of a tall, white-painted wooden door. Gozoshi formed a one-handed seal and placed his other palm against a plate set into the wall, and with a brief flash of chakra, the door unlocked itself.

Hinata looked with awe upon the small, empty, white room thus revealed. She knew that seals were a complex art, but she had never dreamed using them might require they cover every flat surface in a room! Lines of complex symbols interspersed with kana and kanji trailed across every surface, even the floor and the ceiling, forming patterns within patterns to such an extent that it was almost dizzying to look upon.

"Now, just sit on that yellow mark there and face the door," directed Gozoshi calmly, having closed the door in question as soon as they were through it. Even the door was covered in seals on the inside!

"Y-yes, sir," acquiesced Hinata, terrified but unwilling to show it. She moved into the specified position and sat cross-legged, closing her eyes and trying to focus on controlling her fear. She listened with morbid interest as the old scholar moved around the room, making handseals and moulding chakra into various sigils on the walls.

Something of her bearing, which strongly resembled that of a convict on the scaffold awaiting the noose, must have communicated itself to Gozoshi; for he paused, gave an awkward cough, and solicitously asked, "Er, Hinata-sama, would you perhaps like to know about some of the safeguards in the seal arrays in this room?"

She opened her eyes in surprise, looking at him, and shyly nodded. "Y-yes, p-please." Anything which put off her terrible fate was a welcome diversion.

"Well," he began professorially, "these blue ones that go all over the room between these other ones are the main part. They feed chakra into your spirit, causing it to connect more strongly with its corresponding parts in other universes. Everyone's spirit exists in at least a few thousand and sometimes up to half a million other universes, but most of the other parts are the spirits of insects or plants or, if they are connected to people, the people are incomprehensible beings on strange alien worlds. These purple ones shape the surge of chakra, limiting it to only affect your other selves that are similar to the _you_ in this universe. Understand so far?"

"I-I think so, but h-how does connecting m-me to other selves th-that are just like myself… er, myself _here_ I mean, help m-me? Doesn't that kind of d-defeat the purpose?"

"Very sharp!" beamed Gozoshi. "That's where these green ones come in. They nudge the chakra surge just enough to connect you with other selves who are a few years older than you, just enough to give you a head start on developing more self-confidence, like a young adult would have."

"I th-think I s-see now." Hinata was actually more alarmed than reassured by that last revelation. It sounded like her own personality would be overwhelmed by an adult in another universe who happened to have part of the same spirit she had. She didn't know how to articulate this fear in a way that wouldn't bring down further disapproval from her father, though, so she bowed her head and waited for the inevitable.

Gozoshi gave her a puzzled look, but decided he'd done all he could. It wasn't like he'd ever had any children of his own. Maybe being so depressed was a phase they went through or something? He vaguely remembered people mentioning something like that.

"Well, that's good," he said briskly, rubbing his hands together and kneeling painfully between Hinata and the door. "Right, now…

**"Great Spirit Reinforcing!"** he cried, activating the seal array.

Hinata shivered. She had the oddest sensation that the room was both shrinking and stretching around her; it was as though she was suddenly conscious of being both bigger and smaller than she had ever realized before. Tantalizing half-sensations flickered across the fringes of her mind, both strange and beautiful. She caught a brief glimpse of a purple-tinged red sky with three moons, in various hues of brilliant blue and green, hanging above oddly spire-shaped purple mountains on the horizon. Was her skin _green?_ But before she could examine it further, the vision was gone as though it had never been, leaving her feeling surprised and curious but unable to remember exactly why. Then, with a peculiar sensation of coming into focus, she

**CONNECTED.**

"Whoa!" she said, mentally reeling. She couldn't remember quite who she was, or where, or what she was doing. Something about… running to her father? Or was her father walking away disdainfully? He was so harsh… _He needs to be to (run the clan/train me properly). It shows he cares only for (the clan/my advancement in the Art)._

She blinked dizzily. _What?_ That had almost made sense. Was her father really so harsh because he wanted her to succeed? It was a strange and oddly warming perspective. She vaguely became aware of a splitting headache, and suddenly realized she was lying sprawled on her back on the seal-embossed floor of the little white room, but she couldn't answer the old man's worried questions just now because she was too busy passing out.

Gozoshi looked down in distress. THAT certainly hadn't happened last time. And what was that strange, faintly flickering golden glow around the girl's abdomen? He reached out with his hand and bit back an oath as the golden energy grounded itself into his fingertips, giving him painful but superficial burns.

That hadn't been chakra.

How the hell had he managed to connect the girl with a source of _yōki,_ the demonic equivalent of chakra⁈ It should have only connected her to other humans!

He hoped to all the gods he knew of that she woke up soon. If Hiashi-sama heard about the demonic aspect of the results he was doomed.

* * *

_Somewhere in northwestern Tokyo, circa one year before the events of the_ Ranma ½ _manga would have begun:_

"Hahaha! You'll never catch me like that, slowpoke!" Saotome Ranma danced lightly around the inelegant blows of his enraged companion, one Hibiki Ryoga, until they reached the latter's home. "There ya go buddy! See you tomorrow morning?"

The flabbergasted Ryoga looked in disbelief at his house, which he had not seen for three weeks due to his family curse of being able to get lost in an empty closet, and said the only thing he could think of: "Um, sure?" He stared blankly at the front door, then walked up and let himself in. On a whim he looked back, but Ranma had already gone. He blinked once, completely at a loss for what to think, and then continued into the house.

* * *

Ranma raced across fences and rooftops until he reached the vacant lot where he'd been camping with his father and martial arts teacher, Genma. "Hey Pops, I'm baaaAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" His scream was abruptly cut off as he collapsed like a ruptured hot-air balloon, rolling a few times through the muddy grass as his momentum drained away.

Saotome Genma stuck his portly upper half around the end of their weatherbeaten tent and looked at his son in astonishment. Odd, the brat'd never done **that** before. "Are you all right, boy?"

His only answer was a flare of some strange energy earthing itself from Ranma's crumpled form into the surrounding space. It seemed truly otherworldly, to such an extent it gave Genma a headache to perceive it. "I'll be damned," he muttered as he came around the tent to drag his son onto the boy's bedroll, only to wince as he realized his choice of words. _I really hope this doesn't mean all those whacked out curses those temple priests in Fuyoshima called down on us are going to come true._

* * *

Hinata opened her eyes and sat up blearily. She found herself wrapped in a blanket on the floor of the seal-encrusted white room, with the old Branch House researcher watching her intently.

"How are you feeling, Hinata-sama?"

"Surprisingly well, actually," she answered. "Why was I lying on the floor?" She didn't notice that she hadn't stammered once.

"As soon as I connected you to one of your other selves, you looked extremely confused for a moment and then passed out," confessed Gozoshi reluctantly. "What do you remember thinking about?"

"It was very strange. I literally was of two minds about anything I thought of. It was like I was thinking in chorus, and not all my mental voices were thinking along the same lines."

"But you're… single-minded, now?"

Hinata had to stop and think about that. "I think the other me is still asleep," she volunteered after a couple of minutes.

"Hmm. Interesting." Gozoshi considered matters for a moment. "I think we had better keep you under observation until she wakes up."

"Yes, sir," Hinata answered obediently. She folded the blanket neatly and sat on it, then settled in to meditate.

* * *

Ranma groaned, and stirred uncomfortably on his bedroll. He opened his eyes slowly and stared blankly at the ceiling of the Saotome tent while he took stock of himself. He seemed to be all present and accounted for, with no trace of the unexplained blast of agonizing pain that had brought him down on his arrival at the family campsite. Actually, he felt unaccountably relaxed and mentally centred, considering what he'd just woken up from. After some thought, he decided he should probably meditate for a few minutes and see if he could feel anything wrong in his mind or body. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing.

After a minute or so, he realized that something had definitely changed. He felt like he wasn't lonely any more, and this was very strange, because he hadn't been aware he felt lonely in the first place until the almost unnoticeable ache went away. It also didn't really make sense, because his rudimentary chi senses could tell there was no one around except a nosy squirrel trying to figure out their food cache. _Pops must have gone for a doctor or something,_ he thought fleetingly.

He withdrew his senses back into himself and settled deeper into his trance. After a timeless interval, he became aware of a strange impression of duality about himself. He sent a formless query at the him that wasn't him, and was rewarded with a sense of surprise. He was too far into the trance to have any opinion as to what that might mean, and simply sent a feeling of curiosity and longing to be whole back at this oddly separated part of himself.

His unknown other half reciprocated, and suddenly his two selves joined together briefly, though they were too dissimilar to stay connected for more than a fraction of a second. Ranma's mind wobbled in and out of the trance state for a few seconds, finally ending up in trance "facing" the impression of duality, with a question aforethought.

"…Hinata?"

* * *

Hinata's featureless white eyes shot open and she gasped deeply. "…Ranma?" she mumbled.

"Eh? What horse?" asked Gozoshi, looking up from the report he was perusing.

"I'm not sure. I need to meditate some more," she answered distractedly. _What the hell was that?_ she wondered. Again, she didn't notice the uncharacteristic curseword.

Sinking back into the Hyūga version of the Mind of No Mind, which in all honesty wasn't much more effective than what Ranma was doing but sounded a lot more impressive, Hinata cast about for the part of herself that was, ever so slightly, detached.

Ah, _there_ it was…

This time they knew what to expect, and achieved a more lasting connection that was not as much of a union as the first attempt had been.

**Who am I? I thought I was Ranma, but now I'm Hinata too?**

_"Who are we," I mean. I am Hinata and I am also Ranma, in another place and possibly another time too._

**What the heck does that mean?**

_We're both "us." We're just not the_ same _us._

**Uh… I'll take my word for it.**

_Smart girl._ The mental union wobbled violently at that, almost collapsing.

**I'm a GUY! Why would I call myself a girl while meditating? I must have gone crazy, it's the only explanation.** Ranma was contributing a strong dizzy feeling to the joined minds.

_But, er… I'm a GIRL… I've always been a girl…_ Hinata was seldom very assertive, but this she felt she was pretty certain of.

In an unusual leap of logic, Ranma made a connection. **We've always been Ranma and we've always been Hinata. We've always been a boy and we've always been a girl?**

_…Let's go with that, it's easier than giving myselves a headache._

**Yeah. I don't think it works both ways though. Ranma is a boy and Hinata is a girl.**

_That sounds right. Ranma must be the us that wasn't in the seal room with the Great Spirit Reinforcing technique._

**Okay. …Wait, what technique?** Ranma was suddenly hyperfocussed on the word "technique." The mental union promptly collapsed, spitting out two dizzy children with headaches into their separate universes.

* * *

Ranma opened his eyes. That had certainly been different. He wondered again about the technique he'd mentioned in his thoughts; the brief mention of a "seal room" left him as puzzled as the mention of spiritual reinforcement in the technique's name. He had a vague but strong impression that there was now more to himself than he realized. Now that he came to think about it, his unexpected depths seemed inexplicably like a whole other person, squirrelled implausibly away in the most fundamental nooks and crannies of his being. Possibly the weirdest part was that he had a separate name for this other person, even though he identified her as part of himself.

He realized he was giving himself a headache trying to sort this out, and decided to think about it later. For now, there was dinner to prepare and, hopefully, eat before his father returned.

* * *

Hinata stood up and gave a shallow courtesy bow towards Gozoshi.

"I take it you settled matters with the other you?" asked the old man with interest.

"Yes, sir," she answered. "It seems the, ah, rejoining of spiritual branches? …is very strong when first applied, then quickly moderates itself. A good thing, considering how hard it was at first trying to think each single thought with two brains."

"Ah, interesting." Gozoshi mentally compared notes with the test case of the brain-dead baby, and wondered if the initial overreinforcement was responsible for the superlative result he'd obtained there. But that could wait; for now, he needed to assess Hinata's mental state before he could really say whether the technique had worked. "Well, Hinata-sama, I just need you to fill out this personality test and then you can go."

"Thanks," Hinata said, hoping her sarcasm wasn't too noticeable, and sat down again with the test paper.

* * *

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* * *

END PROLOGUE

_Latest revision as of Tues. 2009/12/29_


	2. Chapter 1

**The Disorderly Princess and the Fiery Steed**

A Naruto / Ranma ½ crossover  
© 2009–10 by gsteemso

Chapter One

Not my characters. Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi, a man who appears to really hate his own characters, and Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

* * *

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* * *

To sleep is, on occasion, to dream…

In two completely different universes, so unrelated that not even the laws of physics were entirely the same from one to the other, two utterly dissimilar children slept the night away. One of them was a 15-year-old boy named Saotome Ranma, a martial-arts prodigy who'd been training under his father in how to fight and piss people off for as long as he could remember, wandering from place to place. Currently he was just one person among many millions, in a suburb of Tokyo, attending an all-boys' junior high school — so as not to fall too far behind in his book learning, according to his father. The schoolteacher responsible for this state of affairs, having done his homework, had threatened the man with being blacklisted at every All-You-Can-Eat buffet in the prefecture. A startled Ranma had found himself enrolled within the hour.

The other was a quiet, caring 11-year-old girl named Hyūga Hinata, clan heir to one of the most prestigious families in a hidden village of warriors who considered themselves ninjas, but were much more powerful and usually much less sneaky about their affairs than the ninja of Ranma's world. She was also a student in a school, but the similarities did not run very deep — the Konoha Ninja Academy mainly taught how to fight and gather information, and most of the students graduated to being legally-adult killers-for-hire at age 12. The adults in that world were not exactly desirous of this state of affairs, but for the ninja, violent death walked the streets and forests with horrifying frequency by the standards of Ranma's world; and there were never enough replacements for the meat grinder.

Largely by happenstance, the two were both experiencing "night" during the same period — their respective worlds' progress through time bore no particular relationship beyond always moving in the same direction, though the relative speed of time's flow usually wasn't all that different between them. It was no coincidence, however, that they both began dreaming at the same moment during that night. Their subconscious minds were now connected to one another on a very fundamental level.

S/he wandered through a formless corridor, feeling that something wasn't quite right, but unable to articulate exactly what it was. Occasionally memories from one life or the other would play out around him/her, their new joint perspective provoking thoughts about their memories that they never would have thought before.

_Why am I so mean to Ryoga-kun?_

_Mean? I just tease him. Everyone does that, don't they?_ Unbidden, memories of classmates (in both worlds) either taunting or being taunted by him/her swirled briefly through the surrounding void. Raw emotions smote at him/her. _Huh. True, I guess he doesn't always get the joke._

Memories sleeted past.

_Who's that guy?_

Smile. Warmth. _That's Naruto-kun. He's so brave…_ A rush of overheard moments, all focussed on a shockingly orange-clad boy, inexplicably shunned by everyone around him, who never let anything get him down for long.

_Um. Do I_ like _Naruto-kun?_ For some reason, s/he found this thought distressing. From his/her new perspective, Naruto-kun seemed both unappealingly shrimpy and magnificently imposing. _Wow. Ranma-me never saw anyone in that light before. I guess I do like him._

_Eeeep!_

_What's wrong with that? The me in Naruto-kun's world is almost old enough to be a genin; that's treated as being an adult, and it's not like I'm not a girl there._

_…Why don't I have a girlfriend in the world where I'm a boy? People there don't mature THAT much later._

_No idea. Pops always told me that girls were a distraction from the Art — I think that's why he sent that side of me to an all-boys' school._

_It obviously wasn't for the education. They don't seem to care about how bad my handwriting is on that side._

_It's not that ba— er._ There was an uncomfortable pause. _It IS that bad, isn't it… At least I know how to write nicely from Hinata-me's life. I should be able to share knowing stuff across both sides, with a bit of practice._ Never having known any different, it never occurred to him/her to wonder why two such unrelated worlds both used modern Japanese language and writing.

_How would that work? I can't live my whole lives dreaming or in deep meditation! How would I spar? How would I eat?_

_Why not? Everything comes with practice._

S/he watched the flickering memories for a while, his/her mind wandering aimlessly after the fashion of most dreams. _Interesting. I'm starting to see myself as both of me at the same time, even in memories from before I knew about me._ In concert with the shared thought, the dreamscape generated a wide variety of irregular mirrors around him/her, each showing a different image — some showed either of his/her bodies from various angles, and the rest showed various hybrid combinations of them. Most of the images were nude, but there was no sense of eroticism; only the most narcissistic of people get aroused by looking at themselves in a mirror, and in any case, more than one image showed an unappealing juxtaposition of male and female parts on the same reflection. _The blue hair looks good on me. Maybe my boy self should dye it._

_Dye? Kinda girly._

_So? I am a girl, at least half of me._ The ever-shifting mirror images subtly began to show a higher percentage of his/her female self.

_What the hell? Where's Hinata-me's, uh, thingy⁈_ There was a pause as s/he reflected on his/her horrifically uneven knowledge of the differences between boys and girls, the mirror images focussing sequentially on the two bodies' various intimate parts as his/her thoughts sifted through the data available. _Wow, I look really good for my age,_ s/he thought absently while looking at a reflection of the girl self's nude bosom — which, while very modest in size, would have seemed almost unnatural on an 11-year-old in the other world.

Pleased embarrassment. _Y-yes, I do. O-on both sides,_ looking at the male self's buttocks.

S/he considered the images for a few moments.

Stunned astonishment. _Wow, so that's why touching myselves, um,_ there _feels weird like that._

Disbelief. _Pops is an idiot._

_True._

* * *

The lunch lady bellowed, "Last crunchy bread of the day!" and hurled a small packet at the seething crowd of boys on the other side of the counter. There was a blue-clad blur as a uniformed Ranma bounced off Ryoga's head and snatched the bread out of the air on his way out the door.

Ryoga looked utterly crushed for a moment, before a volcanic fury erupted. "RRRRRRANMAAA!" He charged after the ponytailed bane of his existence.

Ranma paused in the act of opening the package, noticing Ryoga's furious charge in the wrong direction at the other side of the schoolyard. "Huh, I wonder what's eating him?" He dithered for a moment before grimacing and giving chase. He rationalized his being concerned, which he was aware could be viewed as lacking in machismo, on the basis that Ryoga was much more fun to spar with when his temper wasn't running away with him.

He caught up with his friend a couple of blocks away, when Ryoga stopped to bellow, "WHERE THE HELL AM I NOW⁈"

"Hey buddy, what's up?"

"GYAH! How'd you get behind me?"

"I followed you to see what was wrong. You looked really upset."

This took the wind right out of the Lost Boy's sails. His evil enemy was stopping to help him? "W-what? YOU STOLE MY LUNCH!"

"Huh? It was free for the taking and I haven't eaten since the squid bread at lunch yesterday! Stupid greedy old man…" he muttered.

Ryoga went briefly cross-eyed and blinked a few times, his train of thought going off a cliff. It never would have occurred to him that anyone else would be starving too, especially not an incarnation of evil like Ranma. "Er… Me neither," he confessed miserably. He figured he was NEVER going to live this down.

Ranma boggled. "But I led you home after school yesterday and picked you up there this morning!"

Ryoga looked everywhere but at him, radiating shame. "My parents haven't found the place in weeks. There's, ah, no food there."

Ranma was horrified, but had just barely enough sense not to embarrass his friend further by showing it. "Tell you what, from now on, we can share it, OK?" He broke the rather stale bread in half in its package, tearing it open in the same motion, and handed the biggest chunk to Ryoga. "You get the big half 'cause you missed yesterday. But I get it tomorrow!" he added with a grin.

"You wish! I'll fight you for it," laughed Ryoga, cheering up for the first time in months. His empty stomach growled in agreement.

"Okay." Smiling, munching, and dodging each other's halfhearted punches, they headed back to school.

* * *

"Right, class dismissed. Be on time for weapons practice after lunch, now! Practice field three!"

The funnel-shaped lecture hall immediately dissolved in a free-for-all of ten- to thirteen-year-olds, mostly centred on the girls who were trying to show off for Sasuke, which was most of them. In the back, Hinata pulled a lunchbox out of her bag and set her jaw determinedly. It had taken her months to work up her nerve for this. She marched down the steps and around to the middle tier of the room, where Naruto was waiting impatiently for his cup ramen to soak up the hot water he'd just poured into it, and introduced herself to him with a shy smile. "Hi, I'm Hinata. Can I eat with you?"

Naruto gaped in astonishment. "S-sure you can! Pull up a chair!" He looked around and spotted one on his other side that had been abandoned by one of Sasuke's fangirls. Well, if she wasn't using it… He grabbed it and flipped it around to where Hinata was shyly standing. "Here you go!"

"Thanks, Naruto-kun." She sat demurely and set her lunch out on the writing ledge. "What kind of ramen do you have today?"

"Um…" he looked uncertain, and ducked down to rummage around in the dark footwell for a moment. "Ah! The wrapper! Says… 'Beef and MSG flavour.' What have you got for lunch? Do you like ramen too?" It completely escaped him that she'd already known a lot about him for someone he barely recognized.

"Just rice and miso soup, but the spices make it taste really good. Ramen's okay, but I'm not allowed to eat it very often. Not very nutritious, my clan elders say."

Naruto looked horrified. "They don't let you eat ramen? But, but, it's RAMEN! That's terrible! Are you free for a little while after class? I know a really good ramen stand I can show you, they'll let you eat it whenever you want!"

Hinata blushed bright red and, struck momentarily speechless, grew a big, silly grin. _Is— is he asking me on a DATE? WAHOO!_

He wasn't, of course, being a twelve-year-old boy — but she was only (depending how you measured it) eleven-and-a-half or a socially stunted fifteen herself, so it was an understandable leap of logic.

"…Hinata-chan? Are you okay? Hinata-chan?" Naruto was craning his head, trying in vain to catch her gaze with his own — no easy task given that she didn't have visible pupils or irises, that being a characteristic of the White Eyes bloodline limit. Insofar as it was possible to tell, her eyes seemed to have gone completely out of focus. And what was up with that _expression?_ Was she laughing at him? With the ease of long practice, he hid the hurt away inside and tried to shrug it off. That was harder than usual, though; no one had just walked up and asked to talk, eat, or otherwise spend time with him in several years. That's a very long time to a child. "You don't have to see it if you don't want to. It was just an idea," he muttered dejectedly, staring morosely at the grain of the writing surface.

Hinata blinked and replayed that, coming back to Earth rather abruptly. _ACK! Oh no!_ She waved her hands frantically, "No, I'd love to come! I can spend as long as you want t-together…" she trailed off abruptly, her face flaming red again and her traitorous forefingers poking themselves together without her conscious input, as she wondered if she was being too forward.

Naruto gave her a faintly puzzled look, then quickly pasted on a smile. He could tell there was something fishy about this, but the idea that she might have a crush on him was completely beyond his experience and never even occurred to him. Whatever was going on, though, it looked like she was going to be his friend for a while. Best just to enjoy it until her parents found out and told her to stay away from him, like all the other kids had been. "Cool! Wanna practice our taijutsu after you eat?"

She blinked and realized that, yes, he seemed to have bolted his ramen so fast she hadn't seen him do it. "Okay! I should warn you, though, I'm not very good at the Academy style. My clan has its own taijutsu style I'm supposed to use, but it's not very useful for friendly sparring unless you pretend, because of the chakra burns." _And that's without even starting on all the stuff I picked up while dreaming of being a boy in another universe._ That still sounded weird to her, even after all these months, though it _felt_ as natural as breathing by now.

"That's okay, any practice is better than none, right?"

That resonated with the part of her that had spent a decade becoming The Best at his world's taijutsu. She smiled radiantly at him. "Sounds about right, yes." Her dream was right — she did like Naruto.

* * *

Saotome Genma yawned, scratched his gut, and untangled himself from his bedroll. Looking over to where his son should have been gracelessly snoring in the bedroll that took up the other half of the small tent, he was surprised to find it already put away and the boy nowhere to be seen. "Where is he?" he muttered. He could already tell he was alone in the campsite, now that he thought to check for nearby chi signatures.

A while later, he had checked the school and that unstable Hibiki boy's house, to no avail. "Hmmm."

Then he heard it.

"Hah! Too slow! Nyaaaah!"

"RANMA! I **WILL** HAVE IT!" The ground shook with a small explosion from up the street.

"What the hell?" wondered Genma, wandering up the road towards the commotion. Sure enough, there was a badly damaged vacant lot a few doors away, and the two boys were going at it there hammer and tongs. Genma couldn't make out anything they might have been fighting over, though. Had Ranma already pawned it and eaten the proceeds? He was so proud of that boy! Couldn't let him know that, though. He might get complacent. And he wouldn't even need to break up the boys' friendship, because his son had done it for him! Truly, he was a genius at training the boy. All it had taken was a few days of the boy going hungry!

In light of this chain of deduction, Genma was understandably horrified when, on noticing his presence, his son called out "BREAK!" and the two boys stopped fighting! What the hell?

"Hi Saotome-san! Going to eat all Ranma's food again?" Ryoga was less than impressed with his friend's slob of a father. His own might have been out lost most of the time, but he was a good man when he **was** around.

"Oh, he did that last night, and spent all our money on sake so we can't get any more. That's why he woke up so late today. Notice the bloodshot eyes?"

"Ah, I see!"

Genma spluttered indignantly. "Oh, why am I cursed with such a disrespectful son!"

"One, you trained me that way, two, you earned my contempt fair and square by being a greedy boozer, and three, you just missed our morning spar for the second day in three weeks! What happened to training me to be the best, eh?"

Genma glowered, flexing his fists. "I can see I need to put you in your place, boy!"

Ranma and Ryoga looked at one another, gave each other a sharp nod, and leapt as one at the older man, who barely got his guard up in time.

Unfortunately for Genma, while he may have been able to beat Ranma two fights out of three through sheer sneakiness, that fact made him sufficiently overconfident that TWO opponents of the boys' calibre were much, _much_ more of a challenge than he was expecting. He was most dismayed to discover that Ryoga had apparently been TRAINING under Ranma, not trying seriously to kill him. Oh, the shame of having such a dishonourable son, who would teach before being certified! Oh, the pain of having his arm popped out like that!

Genma blacked out.

* * *

Three months later, on a fine spring morning, Ranma and Ryoga emerged triumphantly from the woods of northwestern China into the hidden valley of Jusenkyo, its floor dotted with pools of water studded with bamboo poles. Oddly enough, the name seemed to translate roughly as "Spell-Bearing Spring Place." Without asking a local, there was no way to know whether the connotations of the first part were positive ("charmed") or negative ("cursed"), and in any case, it was such an eccentric name that the boys never imagined that detail might actually matter.

"Ha! We made it!" crowed Ryoga, taking in the scenic vista before them. Travelling with a friend was great. He actually got where he wanted to go!

The months of cheerful company had worked a wondrous transformation on the Lost Boy. He was no longer a mass of anger and depression, and had proven to have a rarely seen but wicked sense of humour underneath it all. He still tended to be rather oblivious, though, and was laughably shy around girls. Ranma had tried to set him up on three different dates as they travelled, and in every case Ryoga had passed out in shock when the girls' interest finally became clear to him. The necessity of trying to wake him up had always prevented Ranma getting any dates of his own off the ground, much to his annoyance.

"Looks like there's a house on the far side. Some sort of caretaker, maybe?" Ranma pointed. He couldn't help but wonder what idiotic reason his old man would have had for coming here, had Ranma not looted their campsite of technique scrolls and other training material and ditched him in Tokyo. It plainly wasn't a normal training ground, considering the reactions they'd gotten while trying to find it.

"Maybe whoever's there will know why people always either laughed at us or tried to steal the training-ground guide whenever we asked them to translate it," suggested Ryoga.

"Yeah. The first time I would have been happy to just forget about it and find a different training ground, but EVERY time? There's something fishy here, and I'm curious." If it weren't for that factor, they would have just stayed someplace easier to find for training. There had certainly been enough opportunities as they hiked across the vastness of China, which was after all one of the largest countries in the world.

"Yeah." The boys carefully made their way across the training ground towards the house in the distance. "Ranma! Watch out for that—"

"Wha—? YAAH!"

**SPLASH!**

"Hahahahah, klutz! I can't believe you fell in a pond on such a cold day! What happened to Mr. Martial Arts?" Ryoga froze as his brain caught up with his eyes. _WHAT THE HELL?_ "R-ranma—?"

The person standing in the shallow water was dressed the same as Ranma had been, but was unmistakably a girl. There was something weird about her eyes, too, though Ryoga couldn't quite make out what it was. She seemed to realize something was off about her shape at the same time he did, and pulled open her gi to look. Two beautiful, perky C-cup breasts were revealed in all their dripping glory. "Huh. Now there's a thing." She seemed to be in shock.

"Ranma? Is that… you?" Ryoga fought to retain consciousness in the face of the stunning revealed flesh before him. The gods only knew what horrors would befall him if he keeled over into one of these pools. Plus, if that was really Ranma… ick. Just _ICK._

Thanks to the part of her that had always been female, if only ever seen in dreams, Ranma had some idea what to expect, but just had to check anyway. She pulled out the waistband of her gi's trousers, and gingerly stuck the other hand down her front to check on a teenage boy's most important body part. Yup, it was gone. Yeek. She began to look horrified as the reality began to sink in.

"Ranma! Stay with me buddy! You gotta get out of there before something worse happens!"

She shook herself and dazedly pulled herself onto the bank, her now bright red ponytail sticking to her face with the water. With shaking hands, Ryoga gently helped her close up her gi — somehow managing to not pass out from the blood rushing to his face — and then pulled a blanket out of his pack. She wrapped herself in it gratefully, still in shock. She may have gotten used to being a girl in her mind, but she'd always been a boy at the same time! This was something else altogether! She began to shiver uncontrollably as a sick feeling crawled through her gut. Was she going to be stuck like this? "Need to meditate," she muttered, closing out the world. Hinata would know what to do about being a girl.

"Ranma? Ranma! …Shit." Ryoga was completely at sea. He knew that when Ranma went straight into deep meditation like this, nothing short of outright injury could rouse him (though, strangely enough, he often woke up from it with bizarrely effective new training ideas). What should he do?

He'd just have to try to get help and hope to hell he didn't get lost this time. He turned, absently taking a step, and unexpectedly found himself face to face with the wooden door of the caretaker's hut or whatever it was. "HELP ME! Please, help!" he cried in his inexpert Mandarin, banging frantically on the door. He would worry about how he'd gotten here later.

The Guide opened his front door, his worker uniform jacket already halfway on. "What's going on? Has someone fallen in a spring?"

"Yes! My friend! We were crossing the valley to see who lived here and he slipped and fell in and now he's a GIRL! I think she's in shock! Please help us!" Ryoga didn't even realize he had reverted to Japanese.

"You not worry Mr. Customer, I bring hot water and we fix, yes? Where you friend at?" replied the Guide in the same language.

Ryoga looked hopelessly at the multitude of springs, most of which were at least partly obscured by mist and the hundreds of bamboo poles that rose out of the pools. His face went horribly pale. "I don't know! I have a family curse of getting lost all the time and I don't know where I left her!" He was starting to hyperventilate.

"Mr. Customer! You friend be all right! I know where is Spring of Drowned Girl, we start looking there, okay? Curse not permanent, you friend still boy in head. He only LOOK like girl. You come now, I show you."

Ryoga sagged in relief. "Th-thanks." He gratefully followed the guide out across the valley floor again, being very careful not to slip like Ranma had. Poor Ranma!

* * *

_HINATA! HELP!_ Ranma struggled to maintain her calm as she meditated. _Her_ calm. He was a girl for gods' sake! This was one fucked up training ground.

In Hinata's universe, the shy girl had keeled over unconscious in the middle of class when Ranma fell in the spring, much to her classmates' distress. Ranma wasn't getting any answers either, because the reverberating shock to Hinata's system had put the Hyūga heir out like a snuffed candle. In the Academy infirmary, the two medic-nins on staff were trying to figure out what had happened to her, and getting some very strange readings. "She's suffering from moderate chakra depletion, but not enough to cause this. And is that YŌKI⁈ What the hell?"

The chief medic-nin quickly performed a high-ranked privacy technique, causing the walls to glow briefly with chakra. It would be a disaster if anyone learned what he thought they had just discovered. "The Hyūga will do a lot to keep their position, but I'd never have guessed they would try to secretly create a jinchūriki. The Hokage will need to be informed. This could be bad, very bad!"

"I don't think it worked, if that's what they did — there doesn't seem to be a foreign entity in her system, just diffuse yōki throughout her entire body. Do you think they actually went so far as to fuse her with a demon?"

"Turn her into a half-demon hybrid? No, I just can't believe that of her. She's always been such a kind-hearted child when she's in here asking about healing techniques — you can't fake that joy when you heal someone. Maybe they tried something of the sort and it simply didn't work? Anyway, she seems to be stable, for now. Keep a close watch over her, and don't let ANYONE in here! I'll go tell Hokage-sama about this myself." He disappeared in a swirl of leaves, landing under a camouflage genjutsu in a full sprint in the street outside.

* * *

Ryoga cried out in relief as he spotted a familiar gi, topped with a tousled mop of damp red hair, in the distance. "Ranma!" He hurried over to her as fast as he could without risking an involuntary swim, kneeling to check her pulse. "She's asleep, I think," he told the Guide, looking concerned.

"We change Mr. Customer back while he asleep, that way he not panic when he wake up," said the Guide. "You watch, you need tell him how this work." The man unwrapped Ranma's blanket and carefully poured some hot water from a large kettle over the girl's head. "Any hot water work, you no need boil it. You see? Mr. Customer is boy again. It only last until next cold water, though, that turn Mr. Customer back into girl. Nobody know cure that always work. There is Drowned Boy spring, but no one know where is and some of time, curses just make creepy mix-up anyway. Very tragic story."

Ryoga looked nauseous. "Why does this happen? What kind of sick freak would disguise a place like this as a training ground?"

"No one know, it just HERE. Have been for many thousand years, maybe even before there people here. No one know who first make, but people and animals been having tragic story here for more than three thousand six hundred year. Maybe longer, many spring not known any more due to tragic story of house fire that kill Guide two hundred forty year ago." He watched Ryoga's face sympathetically. "You get up now, Mr. Customer, we take you friend back to house, yes? No want be around Cursed Springs in rain if can avoid, that very dangerous. Ground get slippery."

Ryoga looked up at the gathering clouds and shuddered. "Yeah." He slung Ranma's insensate form easily over his shoulder, much to the comparatively out-of-shape Guide's relief, and they carefully made their way back to the cosy house at the edge of the valley.

* * *

The Third Hokage, whose name was Sarutobi Hiruzen, and Jiraiya the Toad Sage gathered around Hinata's unconscious body with the two Academy medic-nins, Menjudore and his assistant Bunzo. The two older men's eyebrows rose as they felt the girl's yōki levels for themselves. "This is… disturbing," commented Sarutobi, pensively running his fingers through his white goatee. His agile mind turned over the facts, trying to divine whether there was a Hyūga threat to the village hiding in this mess.

"I don't think this is any kind of demonic infusion or containment technique we've ever seen before," commented Jiraiya thoughtfully, staring at Hinata's peaceful expression. "There are no seals anywhere on or in her body — it almost seems like the yōki is just incidental background noise to her, but we can all see there's too much of it not to have been caused by something."

"The strangest aspect from a medical perspective is that it doesn't seem to be harming or even affecting her in any way we can detect," put in Menjudore. "Normally the stuff acts like a corrosive poison. A jinchūriki only gets away with having it in their system because of the demonic regeneration."

"We all know she's in the same class as a jinchūriki — could this be some sort of escape plot by Naruto's prisoner?" Sarutobi asked Jiraiya quietly. The Nine-Tails _was_ the only known demon in the village.

"Not a chance," reassured the Toad Sage. "The signature is totally different, and I had a hidden Shadow Clone look in on their class as we came in — the kid's not showing any leakage from his fuzzy little passenger at all."

"That's a relief," commented Bunzo.

"Be that as it may, it seems there must be something else going on," observed Jiraiya. "What is the girl's elemental affinity? Have they been tested yet?"

"I'll check the records." Bunzo shuffled out the door, returning a few minutes later with a thick dossier. After skimming through it for a few minutes, he observed, "Someone's been slacking. That class doesn't seem to have been tested yet."

"Oh, really?" asked Sarutobi dangerously. "We'll soon see about that." With a half-seal and a puff of smoke, he made a Shadow Clone and sent it back to the Hokage Tower to notify Interrogation. "I will not have incompetent instruction here, especially not of a class with so many clan heirs in it."

"Indeed."

Jiraiya spoke up, "I think we've learned all we can from direct examination of the subject, at least for the moment. Bunzo-kun, please fetch us some affinity-testing paper."

The junior medic-nin poked around in a drawer for a minute and extracted a stack of small, stiff paper squares. He handed one to the Sage, who set it next to Hinata and carefully performed a tiny chakra transfusion from the prone student to the paper square. It slowly, fitfully split up the middle, but stopped halfway. Jiraiya looked more closely at it, and realized it had gotten too damp to split further. The paper was no longer sensitive to chakra — it was ruined.

"Interesting. We know this test can't reveal multiple affinities — the paper only responds to its closest inherent similarity with the subject's aura, and it was alternating between splitting and getting damper. The only way that could have happened is if her affinity was wobbling back and forth between Wind and Water."

Menjudore looked astounded. "I'd swear I never heard of any ailment that could do that, and I studied some really bizarre diseases to get my Pædiatrics Mastery. You wouldn't believe some of the weird stuff that can happen to a child's chakra coils. Adults are more resilient."

The three older men performed a variety of sensitive tests on Hinata's chakra network, Bunzo fetching supplies as needed, but they couldn't find anything unusual except for the strange oscillation in her elemental affinity. "It almost looks like some outside force we aren't detecting is acting on her chakra coils," observed Sarutobi. "I don't want to risk using chakra to wake her up with that going on, but I think we need to ask her what she knows about this. Bunzo-kun, a glass of water, if you please."

The water was duly fetched, and Sarutobi carefully flicked a few drops in her face. Her limbs twitched a bit but she didn't wake.

Jiraiya looked intent, like a bloodhound that had just found a scent. "Do that again," he said urgently, this time maintaining a handheld diagnostic technique next to Hinata's head.

"Oh? All right." Flick. Flick. "What do you see?"

"Her ambient chakra aura convulsed when you applied water, in exponential proportion to how much you added."

"Hmmm. What about the ambient yōki in her body?"

"Same effect, I think. The two were not holding any particular relationship to one another, so it was hard to tell."

"Well, only one thing left to try," commented Bunzo. Not thinking it through, he grabbed the glass of water and splashed Hinata's face with the entire contents before the others could stop him. Fortunately, it didn't hurt her… well, sort of.

"By the gods!" Faced with **this**, the other three quite forgot to chastise him for his foolhardy action.

Hinata had turned into a prepubescent but otherwise similar-looking young girl with bright violet hair, a slightly rosier complexion and — Sarutobi checked, on a hunch — normal blue-irised, dark-pupilled eyes, with no sign of her hereditary White Eyes! Oh, and she was still unconscious.

"I think we can safely say this isn't something the Hyūga would have meant to happen," observed Jiraiya. "Her White Eyes aren't merely disguised, they're completely absent!"

"That's not all," added Menjudore grimly. "While there is still a low level of chakra suffusing her body, she has no chakra coils, only a complex but similar network circulating with moderate levels of yōki. She's still technically human, but for all practical purposes, she's been turned into a low-level demon!"

* * *

Later that morning, now that the rain had stopped again, Ranma and Ryoga were taking a refreshing run around the valley — keeping well away from the actual training ground, of course. "Whaddaya mean, it's not so bad because I make a pretty girl⁈" Ranma bellowed, his outrage only half in jest. "That's not funny!" He refused to admit any pride whatsoever in being as good-looking when female as when male. That was private.

"Yes it is!" Ryoga called back, laughing, just managing to keep out of his friend's reach. Being whom he was, his course was sufficiently erratic that Ranma's blows kept just barely missing him, even though Ranma was a bit faster on his feet.

"I'll make you eat those words!" Ranma jinked left at the same time as Ryoga did, much to the latter's surprise, prompting the Not-so-Lost Boy to take to the trees just in time to escape Ranma's righteous vengeance. The chase rapidly climbed up the hillside at the entrance to the valley, soon coming out on a rocky, treeless trail along a vertiginous cliff edge with a magnificent view of the distant Place of Cursed Springs, far below. It would have been a breathtaking vista if they weren't busy trying to spar on the treacherous terrain.

All of a sudden, just as Ryoga was finally getting the drop on Ranma, right at the cliff edge, the unexpected form of Saotome Genma came rocketing out of the underbrush. "You're getting sloppy, boy!" he bellowed, tackling the figure whom he mistakenly thought was his son right off of the mountainside. No boy of his would walk out on his training before the end!

"GYAAAAH! You idiot! We're gonna either break all our bones or get _cursed_ when we hit the bottom of this!" roared an infuriated Ryoga, clocking Genma a vicious blow to the jaw that sent the two flying in different directions over the decreasingly distant cursed training ground.

"A curse? What kind of gullible idiot does he take me for?" wondered Genma, aiming for a big, open spring that he knew would give him a nice soft landing.

Ryoga sneezed in midair, causing him to bobble his landing and strike a cursed spring instead of the big, soft-looking bush overhanging it that he had been aiming for. Fortunately, he also missed the bamboo training stakes that stabbed skyward a little further over.

There were two large splashes.

Ranma, meanwhile, had gone pale as a ghost and was frantically running back down the trail, hoping he would not be too late to help his friend. Oh, and his father, but honestly, as far as Ranma was concerned that idiot deserved whatever curse he had brought upon himself. With any luck, neither would have been knocked unconscious by the impact. After all, neither deserved to drown, which would in Ranma's opinion be a stupid way to die for strong fighters like them.

A few minutes later, Ranma was hunting along the edge of the valley below the cliff where they'd encountered his father, when the skies suddenly let loose again. "Marvellous," she groused as she adjusted her dripping clothing. This curse business was going to be a real pain in the ass, she could tell.

Some way further along, at the fringes of the actual training ground, she discovered an exhausted, waterlogged, black-furred baby rabbit, sprawled insensate next to a dark little spring overhung with bushes. The pool seemed to radiate coldness, and on examination, the rabbit turned out to be too chilled even to shiver. She could tell it would die if it didn't get warm soon. At the same time, while she knew rabbits could swim, it seemed rather unlikely that one this tiny would have done so by choice. That pretty much confirmed that this was a curse victim. "Ryoga?" she asked tentatively, trying to sweep some of the water out of its fur with her hands. It didn't respond, laying like a dead thing, though she knew it wasn't quite gone yet — she could just barely feel its dimly wavering little aura. The poor little thing was less than half the size of her hand, which in her current form was itself noticeably smaller than she was used to.

The frigid mountain rain got heavier.

"Crap. I just KNOW this is going to come back and bite me." Sighing, she carefully picked up the unconscious little bunny and tucked it into her undershirt, in the warm space between her breasts. She tried not to think about the weird sensations this evoked, which felt highly unnatural to a person born male; her Hinata side, of course, wasn't nearly this chesty, which meant it was a wholly new sort of unwelcome experience. She wrapped her arms around her bustline and kept walking, trying to work up enough warmth to save the baby rabbit while keeping an eye out for her father at the same time. Fortunately, the cursed water in the bunny's fur had been sufficiently diluted by the heavy rain not to affect her now.

After a while, the rabbit warmed up enough to start shivering, and gave a convulsive sneeze, expelling more icy water into the fabric of her gi. The sudden motion of its wet fur against her body tickled horribly, but she managed (with some effort) not to drop it in her surprise.

Some while later, she came across a large spring with a rotund, unconscious panda in a faded training gi floating face up in it. "Huh. You know, somehow that shape suits you, Pops," she commented, grabbing a nearby fallen branch and trying to pull the animal to the edge of the pool.

"Ah! Mr. Customer! You hold on there, no want fall in second spring! I have pole with hook for this! You wait short moment!" called the guide, from a fair distance off. He had gotten a bad feeling and come out to check the various Springs when the heavy rain started so suddenly. That usually indicated the presence of someone with both a Jusenkyo curse and bad karma, a description which for the last fifteen minutes or so had suited Genma perfectly.

Twenty-five effortful minutes later, Ranma and the Guide had fashioned a small lean-to out of an old tarp in the cramped grassy area between the Springs of Drowned Panda, Drowned Hedgehog, and Drowned Sea Turtle; then laid out and dried off the two new curse victims.

"This very bad, Mr. Customer, springs do strange things to head when you nearly dead in one," said the Guide worriedly. "Here, you need keep you friend where he was, he too weak to risk changing back right now and he die of cold if you not warm him." He handed the little bunny back to Ranma. "He not in danger other way, he not almost die until out of spring. This one, though…" he trailed off, examining the panda's head. "Maybe he be okay, it not look like he bleeding or got goose egg."

"Yeah, Pops has a pretty hard head," smirked Ranma. "Why do you say we can't change Ryoga back yet, though?"

"You feel how faint Mr. Customer aura is? Curse use some chi of body to make change, not just magic of Jusenkyo. Try change when you nearly dead like him, it kill you for sure."

"Good grief!" Ranma looked at the shivering leveret nestled obliviously in her cleavage with horror. They would have to figure out some way to protect rabbit-Ryoga from rain (at least until his cursed form grew up a bit), or he would nearly freeze to death every time he changed — and then be too weak to survive switching back. She suddenly realized that, although he had only been joking at the time, Ryoga had been right. A girl curse WAS getting off lucky. She shuddered, her skin crawling with horror.

"You watch Mr. Customers, yes? I get kettle, we see if you father affected in head."

She nodded.

A few minutes later, Genma had been changed back and Ranma was holding the warm kettle with the rest of the water against her chest, the better to help Ryoga. "Oh, that good idea, we change him back in minute. When he warm enough to wake himself up, he probably strong enough for change. Eh? Mr. Customer, what wrong with you eyes? Can you see?"

Ranma looked puzzled. "Yeah, I can see just fine. Why do you ask?"

The Guide was cut off from answering, as Genma gave a loud groan and sat up. "What happened?" he asked dizzily.

"You got yourself and Ryoga cursed, is what happened," snapped Ranma. "What the hell is wrong with you, you moron?"

Genma looked offended. "Cursed? Yeah, RIGHT," he scoffed. "Who the hell are you to address me so rudely, anyway, you feeble little blind girl? Respect your betters!"

"That you son, Mr. Customer," said the guide disapprovingly. "You not believe in curse, you step in rain, that change you mind in hurry."

"Yeah? Watch me," said Genma, stepping confidently into the drizzle, which straightaway got heavier. He promptly reverted to a panda. "Growf⁈" He lost his balance and landed on all fours, looking back at himself in astonishment. There was some kind of big hairy animal behind him! He started scrambling away from his own hindquarters, but since he wasn't used to moving on all fours in an unfamiliar body, he tripped and nosedived into the mud after only a couple of steps. "Graau!" he complained, sitting up and rubbing his nose. He paused, horrified, at the sight of his front paws. That wasn't right! "Baawf?" He looked so bewildered at this turn of events that Ranma and the Guide couldn't help themselves, and burst out laughing. The panda sulked.

"At least he not affected in head by Spring," chortled the Guide. "No real panda do that. Hahahaha!"

At this point, all the noise, the shaking, and the heat of the kettle finally revived Ryoga. His squirming in an attempt to sit up in the confines of Ranma's undershirt had her laughing even harder — it tickled fiercely. She fished him out, much healthier now but still bewildered and disoriented, and poured half of the hot water over him, using the remainder on herself. "Aah, what a relief!" the no-longer-a-she said breezily. "That feels so much better!"

"Grraawf!"

"Sorry Pops, that was all the hot water we had out here. You'll have to wait 'til we get back to the Guide's house. You'd have changed back to a panda in the rain anyway — Mr. Guide there doesn't have any more umbrellas."

"Feh," answered the panda in disgust, sounding remarkably human.

Ryoga had collapsed to his knees, still feeling very weak, and the Guide had wrapped the last semi-dry towel around his naked shoulders. "Wh-what happened?" he asked blearily. "Why do I feel so sick?"

"Mr. Customer fall in Spring of Drowned Leveret. Mr. Customer curse form very tiny, nearly freeze to death in rain. You friend Mr. Ranma save you life!"

"What's a leveret?" asked Ryoga, bewildered.

"Baby rabbit or hare. Mr. Customer cursed form so cute! My little daughter Plum, she love you, I bet."

"Oh, wonderful. I hope I won't stay that tiny forever!" said Ryoga sourly. He had a vague memory of an impossibly large girl-Ranma looming out of the rain, though everything had gone black well before she actually reached him. He frowned. What was up with her eyes, anyway?

"Oh no, only few year. It take longer than real rabbit because Mr. Customer still age at speed of human. That lucky because otherwise you die of old age in maybe ten, eleven year or so. Now, there important things Mr. Customers need know about curses. Young Mr. Customers already hear some of this, but…" The Guide launched into a long summary of the aspects of the curse that would affect Ryoga and Genma. He had already told Ranma the night before what the boy would need to learn about being a girl, when next he found himself in a town with a doctor or nurse; the Guide understandably did not feel himself qualified to discuss what he delicately referred to as "feminine issues," much to Ranma's initial bewilderment. (When he finally figured it out, he'd been struck speechless with horror for almost half an hour.)

* * *

Hinata opened her eyes. What—?

Oh, she was in the Academy infirmary. Had something happened to her? The last thing she remembered was a dreadful lurching sensation overtaking her as she practised her Transformation technique in class. (Naruto-kun, she recalled with a smile, had made himself look like Teacher Mizuki in a pretty dress, much to the students' amusement and the male Mizuki's annoyance.)

She tried to sit up, and was alarmed to discover that she couldn't move from the neck down! What was going on? "Hello? Is anyone there? I can't move!" she said, frightened.

"I'm afraid something rather odd has happened to you, young lady," an unfamiliar old man's voice replied from somewhere out of sight. She tried to activate her White Eyes so she could see whom she was speaking to, but for some reason it didn't work. That was perhaps even more alarming than being paralysed. "We are very concerned that something illegal may have been done to you. Do you recall having any unusual medical procedures in the past year or so?"

"What⁈" She was utterly terrified, now. What was going _on?_ "Why can't I move? And why do I sound funny?"

"Do not worry about the restraints. We will release them when we are sure you are acting under your own control. As to your voice, well, that's related to the peculiar thing that has happened to you. We were actually hoping you would already know something about it." The speaker moved around into her field of view, smiling reassuringly.

"H-hokage-sama!" She was speechless. What could the leader of Konoha want with an unremarkable young child like her?

"Yes, I am," he answered with grandfatherly amusement. "Now, this is very important. Do you remember anything unusual, like an unfamiliar medical technique, being applied to you in the last year or so?" They knew nothing had been wrong before eleven months ago or thereabouts, because of the annual physical exam conducted on all students.

"Well, I underwent a secret Clan sealing technique designed to boost my self-confidence about eight months ago, but as far as I know it worked as it was meant to — there have been no strange effects between then and now," the young girl volunteered. "P-please — I need to know, what's happened to my voice?"

The Hokage nodded slightly to someone behind her, and there was the sound of swirling leaves as someone unseen body-flickered away.

"Well, I'm afraid we have no idea what caused it, but when we splashed water on you to try and wake you up, you… _changed,"_ he said carefully.

"Ch-changed? How changed?"

"Well, for some reason, your body was completely replaced by a non-Hyūga equivalent," he admitted. "You seem to still be you, just a different you." He left unsaid that her chakra system might never be the same, reasoning that she had enough weird news to cope with already.

"Y-you can't be serious!" she spluttered. "When I was splashed with _water?_ How is that even possible? Sir," she added, belatedly remembering whom she was addressing.

"We don't know yet, but rest assured we intend to find out," said the old man firmly. "I imagine you'd like to see a mirror?"

"Yes, please — I think."

The Hokage performed some sort of technique and produced a shiny disc of water in front of her face. She gasped.

"I-is that really _me?_"

"Yes, I'm afraid it is."

"I have _pupils!"_

"Like I said, your body is physically no longer that of a Hyūga — you no longer possess the White Eyes," Sarutobi intoned gravely. "You seem to have gotten a year or two younger, too. I daresay quite a few of us old folks will be wondering how THAT happened," he added with a smile.

Hinata's head sagged back into the pillow, its owner too stunned to respond to the old man's joke. This couldn't be happening! No longer a Hyūga? Her father would disown her! And if she was truly younger by a noticeable amount, she mightn't be able to support herself by becoming a genin!

Hinata burst into tears.

* * *

.

* * *

END PART ONE

_Latest revision as of Sat. 2010/07/17_

Author's note (Fri. 2010/04/02):

I have always found a great amount of contradictory and/or unclear data floating around on precisely what the words are for the various places, people, and cursed springs the Ranma characters encounter in China. By the time I wrote Chapter Three of this story, I had gotten fed up with the whole business, so I looked up the original ideographs myself. The following are the results of that analysis as applicable to this chapter. The Mandarin romanizations are in Pinyin, which has drastically different pronunciation rules than English does. The Japanese readings are how a Japanese reader would interpret the Chinese hanzi — the Japanese-language pronunciations of the equivalent Japanese kanji are utterly and totally unrelated, even though the kanji and the traditional forms of the hanzi look almost identical.

• 呪泉郷 — Ẑòuquánxiāŋ in Mandarin, Jusenkyō to a Japanese reader. Means "Cursed Spring District."

• 娘溺泉 — Niáŋnìquán in Mandarin, Jōdekisen to a Japanese reader. Means "Girl Drowned Spring." (Note that 'drowned' in this sense can also mean 'immersed.')

• 䨲溺泉 — Nóunìquán in Mandarin; has no Japanese reading — at least, there isn't one in the Unihan database. Means "Leveret Drowned Spring." (Note that 'drowned' in this sense can also mean 'immersed.')


	3. Chapter 2

**The Disorderly Princess and the Fiery Steed**

A Naruto / Ranma ½ crossover  
© 2009–10 by gsteemso

Chapter Two

Not my characters. Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi, a man who appears to really hate his own characters, and Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

* * *

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* * *

_Jusenkyo Valley, Qinghai Province, China:_

Three figures moved easily down a rural road, barely more than a trail, through a heavy mountain rain. They were a large panda; a short, redheaded girl with pale blue eyes that would have seemed unremarkable, were it not for their eerily white pupils; and a portly man in a Red Army workers' uniform. The latter was the Jusenkyo Guide, who hadn't felt inclined to introduce himself to the panda. It was the cursed form of Saotome Genma, whose crudeness and inconsiderate manners had offended the Guide as few others had managed in such a short time. Had he not met the likeable young woman well beforehand, she being the cursed form of the panda's son Ranma, he might have been inclined to give the pair as little guidance as he could get away with, in hopes they might offend someone and be removed from his realm of responsibility.

The group was headed towards the nearest settlement that was safe for a girl to approach, that being the village of Joketsuzoku. Going the other way, into the traditional lands of the Musk, didn't bear thinking about when there was a female in the party; no one had seen any of the animal-men in hundreds of years, but rural areas like Jusenkyo have long memories for danger.

Joketsuzoku was home to a matriarchal warrior people of the same name, which appeared to translate roughly as "Tribe of Hero-Women." Genma hoped he could con some supplies out of the villagers; to his way of thinking, if things went wrong, there was no realistic way any group run by weak women could possibly pose a threat to him.

The Guide suspected the general trend of the panda's thoughts, which had been pretty clear from the conversation over lunch earlier. The large Mr. Customer was genial enough, but his prejudices were appalling. His behaviour towards his son's cursed form was very high-handed; and the Guide was honestly relieved that the boy hadn't seemed to take it personally.

Ranma and Genma noted a slight disturbance in the trees off to the left as they passed through a gap in some boulders; Ranma surmised it was a Joketsuzoku sentry, and Genma ignored it as irrelevant. If there was any trouble, the boy could get them out of it. It would be good training.

Nestled in the bosom of the female boy to keep warm, a tiny leveret peered out of her gi, amazed at how enormous everything looked when he was in his cursed form. The girl's friend and travelling companion Hibiki Ryoga had initially balked at riding in his current position, but it rapidly became clear that the only alternatives were to freeze to death or risk being crushed in one of the packs, so as best he could, he'd just ignored the soft, intoxicatingly-scented girl-flesh that surrounded him on three sides and got on with things. It was only his old buddy Ranma, right?

By the time they reached Joketsuzoku, he'd nearly convinced himself it was no big deal.

* * *

_Hyūga Clan compound, Konoha, Land of Fire:_

Hyūga Hiashi blinked rapidly. The Hokage was summoning him in regards to a possibly criminal technique applied, on clan authority, to his own daughter⁈ Well, he was damned if he'd go into a meeting like THAT half-prepared. "Summon Sealwright Gozoshi," he curtly ordered the Branch House guard outside his reception room. The two looming jōnin from the Hokage Tower, standing behind him, looked on impassively.

Moments later, the guard returned in a swirl of leaves. "Sir, he's not answering his door and no one's seen him since the evening before yesterday!"

Hiashi's cheek twitched. "Force the door. Search his quarters!" he snarled. What the hell was going on here?

A squad of grim-faced Hyūga gathered around the nondescript door of a small top-floor walkup at the back of the compound. With a discreet pulse of directed chakra, they activated their White Eyes. "No trap on the door," muttered the lead guard, and with a "get ready" hand sign to his squad, kicked it open. They were immediately met with a faint but disturbing smell they couldn't quite place. Concerned, the group used their White Eyes to look through the interior walls into the rest of the cramped three-room apartment. Suddenly, things made more sense.

Solemnly, they filed into the sleeping area and gathered around the cold body of the late Master Sealwright Gozoshi.

* * *

Ranma and Ryoga were standing in a crowd, listening eagerly to the Guide's explanation of the annual village championship tournament they had the good fortune to be witnessing. They were impressed by the casual strength displayed by the contestants, though they were rather underwhelmed by the girls' actual skills. "Seriously, that chick's leaving openings you could throw Pops through," said Ranma quietly. Ryoga, still in leveret form, nodded from his position in her cleavage. He had to admit the contestant was pretty though, even if you couldn't say the same of her huge, mannish-looking opponent.

Suddenly, the Guide noticed something missing. "Sirs? Where panda Mr. Customer got to?"

Ranma looked behind her. Sure enough, there was a notable shortage of malodorous wet panda in the immediate vicinity. "Ah, shit," she griped. "I _thought_ the air was smelling nicer these last few minutes." She craned to try and see over the crowd, but even her male half was of strictly average height, and she'd lost quite a few centimetres to the curse.

"Oh dear," said the Guide in disbelief. "I see him. What he eating there?"

Ranma looked where the Guide was looking, just as a random shift in the crowd revealed a sign next to the gorging panda. In the rather archaic local dialect, it read "First Prize." Ranma groaned. "Crap. He hasn't been around for more than a day and he's already being a pain in the ass. Trust that idiot not to pack enough food."

Moments later, the final match ended, and an incredibly shrivelled old woman wearing an elaborate cloth headdress jumped up on the log to hail the new village champion, as the Guide explained in a whisper. The crowd went wild. The girl, who had long purple hair and had fought using two large, colourful maces, turned to invite everyone to share in her prize. Of course, it was then that the crowd realized a wild panda had somehow gotten to it first. A confused murmur went up as everyone started asking one another how to respond to this. It wasn't exactly a normal occurrence.

"That's no ordinary panda," said the old woman in the headdress, in the local dialect. "No normal panda would eat human food, and especially not so near a crowd. That must be an outsider with a Jusenkyo curse!" she shouted. An ugly roar rose from the onlookers, who surged towards Genma brandishing weapons.

Of course, only then did he realize there was anything amiss. He looked around in surprise, shocked to discover there was nowhere to run, and frantically pulled out a sign. **BOY! Where are you?** _flip_ **Come and defend your hard-working father!**

Ranma hid her face in her hands. "Please tell me the idiot didn't just drag me into this," she groaned.

"Wish I could, young sir," answered the Guide sympathetically, before switching to Chinese. He called to another incredibly shrivelled old woman, this one much closer than the one on the challenge log, "Honoured Elder Dishsoap! I need to talk with you about that panda!"

She turned, and recognizing him, immediately leapt over to the group. "Well, hello again, young Rhubarb. I take it the panda is a customer of yours?"

"Yes, Elder, unfortunately. He got himself cursed yesterday, and through his stupidity, caused the cursing and near death of another customer in the process. I had honestly hoped to be rid of the man before we got here," the Guide confessed — speaking freely, as he knew the Japanese boys wouldn't be able to understand the local dialect.

Behind him, the panda went down under an angry mob armed with heavy nets, still frantically waving signs with one paw and trying to cram in a last few morsels from the prize table with the other. Ranma and Ryoga, who were trying in vain to follow the conversation using their rudimentary Mandarin, were too busy to notice, and wouldn't have much cared anyway — it had become abundantly obvious in the three months they'd travelled together that Ranma was better off without the old fool, now that he was old enough to look out for himself.

"And what about the blind girl and her bunny?"

"Springs of Drowned Girl and Leveret," explained Rhubarb. "She claims she's not actually blind, though don't ask me how she can see out of eyes like those. They're really a pair of teenage boys. The rabbit is the one who almost died because of the panda; he's not big enough to keep warm without help when it rains."

"I see. Plainly, we will have to hold a second trial for the greedy one, assuming we don't just do away with him for the first insult. Inflicting a Jusenkyo curse that could kill the victim is no laughing matter."

* * *

As he walked with dignity and without at all rushing, whatever anyone said, through the streets of central Konoha, Hyūga Hiashi massaged his forehead with the knuckles of one hand. This day was turning into an unmitigated disaster. Something had apparently gone disastrously wrong — almost a year after the fact! — with the Great Spirit Reinforcing he'd authorized to be performed on his daughter and heir, and the only one who knew anything about it had apparently passed away from natural causes a day and a half before the whole mess blew up in his, Hiashi's, face. _Some days it just doesn't pay to chew through the restraints,_ he mused sardonically. If all of the foregoing was not enough, now he had the damned Clan Elders breathing down his neck about it, too. In light of that unpleasant reality, it was almost a relief to be leaping to answer the demands of the damned senescent Hokage like some wet-behind-the-ears genin.

A subtle cough from his Branch House escort alerted him to the fact that they'd arrived at the Academy. "They're waiting for you in the infirmary, sir," one of the two hulking jōnin who had been sent to bring him here said politely.

Hiashi nodded, and knowing he was expected, body-flickered straight up to the room in a swirl of leaves.

"Ah, Hiashi-kun, so glad you could join us," greeted the Hokage.

"What has happened here, Milord Hokage? The pair of jōnin who came to alert us that there was a problem were not cleared to tell us much."

"Well, in all honesty, it was rather hoped you might be able to tell _us_ what your clan had done to this poor girl," said Sarutobi with a hint of steel in his voice. "Jiraiya-kun, show him the chakra scan, will you?"

With some difficulty, Hiashi concealed his sudden escalation in worry. If the Pervy Sage had been called in on this, it was probably even worse than he'd thought — the man was Konoha's undisputed top expert on the sealing arts. He accepted the dossier with a polite nod and addressed himself to the contents. "What in— Is this some sort of foolish joke?" He was not impressed. This data set was preposterous!

Then he caught sight of the small figure on the cot opposite. "Who is _that_ supposed to be? I thought you said my daughter Hinata was the victim!"

"She was," answered Sarutobi sternly. "As you can see, she has somehow suffered a complete physical transformation, and would probably appreciate the support of her family and her clan in this difficult time." He considerately pretended not to see the tears coursing down the poor child's cheeks.

"Hinata? Is this true?" gasped Hiashi, horrified. He approached the cot, and examined the girl's face carefully. She still hadn't been released from her restraints, except for one arm, and had no choice but to stoically meet his gaze. "My gods. It is you," breathed Hiashi in disbelief. "What has happened to your eyes, girl?"

"I'm… not physically a Hyūga any more, father," she said despairingly. "I'm so sorry I have let you down…"

Hiashi stood in shock for a moment. After that short interval, though, the clan leader shouldered aside the father in him, and he reluctantly accepted that only one course of action was now open to him. "Hinata, my daughter, I tell you plainly that you have not let anyone down. On the other hand… I wish I did not have to do this, but the Hyūga rules of succession are very clear: the heir _must_ be able to command the White Eyes herself. Never before has a designated heir managed to lose their birthright halfway to maturity in this way, but I already know what the Elders will say: From this day forward, you are stripped of your status as heir to the Hyūga. I am sorry, my daughter. Looking on the less horrible side, though — since you have not yet been shown how to control others with it and no longer have the White Eyes to protect, I can probably convince the Elders you needn't be branded with the Caged Bird seal."

Hinata continued to cry in silence as her world was torn out from under her.

* * *

A group of four Joketsuzoku Elders, together with a small honour guard of regular warriors, surrounded the heavy iron cage. A bucketful of scalding water was hurled through the bars onto the tightly bound panda lying face down within. "YEOWCH! Why'd you make it so HOT?" bellowed Genma. "Damned crazy old women…" he muttered scornfully, under his breath.

"I heard that, greedy-guts," replied one of the Elders drily, in perfect Japanese. "You are not in a position to be hurling insults, as you should have figured out by now if you had any sense."

"Where's my son? What have you monsters done with my only flesh and blood?" Genma asked self-righteously, trying to generate some sympathy in his captors. Old grandmothers were a bunch of softies, right?

"Oh, have no fear, your estimable offspring would already be married to three fine warriors by now if it weren't widely known that giving him the Kiss of Marriage would net them you for an in-law," another old crone chuckled malevolently. "Oh, if I were seventy years younger…"

The other three Elders looked moderately exasperated. "You know, Loofah, men _can_ have uses OUTSIDE the bedroom on occasion," one of the two who had hitherto been silent commented with a small smile.

"One woman's opinion, Talcum," replied Loofah loftily.

The former panda turned green at the mental images this exchange provoked, until he managed to shake it off with the thought that it was that disrespectful boy's problem, not Genma's. _Huh? Wait just a minute here…!_ "What do you mean, MARRIED? The boy is honour-bound to marry a Tendo daughter and carry on the Schools! I didn't spend the last thirteen years training him twenty-four hours a day just to have him tied down in some backwater village no one's ever heard of!" he roared indignantly.

"Oh, REALLY, now," said an icy voice, a voice Genma most definitely did not want to hear in such proximity to the outraged announcement he'd just made. Ranma, still in girl form with bunny-Ryoga peering out of her cleavage in case of cold water accidents, stepped into view around the corner of the cage. "So I'm suddenly ENGAGED with no warning? Would you even have told me before we got there? You bastard! Everything you've done these past couple of years has either been to feed your fat gut or to screw up my life — usually both at once! In case you didn't get the message when I ditched you in Japan, I'm damned if I'll go ANYWHERE with you!"

Ryoga made a faint hiccuping noise of agreement, nodding vigorously. He being so small, no one but Ranma noticed.

She stood and seethed for a few moments, regaining her centre only with difficulty. She reflected absently that Hinata must be upset about something, too. Better meditate soon and see if they could help one another.

"Boy! Spending time in that weak body has obviously corroded your sense of honour! This is a matter between our two clans, decided before you were even born!"

"Yeah? Then why didn't you ever MENTION it before?" glared Ranma. "I mean, _pretending_ to give a damn about your only son woulda been nice. Feh. I dunno why I'd expect you to start now." Travelling with the Lost Boy and his occasional unexpected bursts of wit had sharpened Ranma's verbal fencing skills considerably… not that that was saying much, considering the average six-year-old could talk rings around him at the beginning of the trip, but he really had made remarkable progress.

He was now at the level of a precocious nine-year-old. Hinata would be so proud.

"I think it's a good thing you were listening in for that, dearie, but we need to prepare for the fool's trial now," said Loofah. "You can tear strips off whatever's left after we're done."

"Oh, right… Sorry, Elder." Ranma withdrew again, heading off to spar with some more of those nice girls who kept looking at her and giggling.

"Trial? What trial? So I ate from a buffet, so what? Have the boy wash dishes or something. It's his duty to look after his old father."

Talcum spoke up angrily. "You ate the first prize for the tournament, and befouled what you didn't stuff your face with! We'd be well within our rights under the Outsider Laws to demand your head for that insult. Fortunately for you, your child doesn't want you dead — though I honestly can't see why not! He's offered to supervise your period of slave labour in exchange for our sparing your worthless hide."

"Actually, that's a thought — as fat as he is, his panda skin is one of the biggest I've seen, at least around the middle. We could sell the pelt after we kill him," opined the fourth Elder, mostly to watch the Outsider sweat; they were well aware that most of his bulk was muscle, which was why his panda form had been so tightly bound.

"Can't we talk about this⁈" asked Genma desperately, his eyes wide.

"What's to talk about?" responded the Elder who'd spoken first. "There's no doubt whatsoever about who you are or what you did. How many rude Outsiders with panda curses do you think there are around here? The only question is the exact nature of your punishment. It will be more of a sentencing hearing than a trial."

"Ergh," mumbled Genma, gripping the bars of his cage with dismay. This wasn't looking promising. They might kill him, or — worse — make him _work!_ As Genma had learned so well under Happosai's hellish tutelage, an honest day's work was only very tolerable when it was your own idea and not someone else's, particularly when that someone else had a grudge against you.

* * *

Finally released from the restraints, Hinata sat in the Academy infirmary hugging her knees to her chest, with tears trickling down her cheeks. She didn't care any more. As if losing her blood limit, birthright and developing bustline weren't bad enough, now she had been informed by a heartless delegation of decrepit Clan Elders that she was to be expelled from the Hyūga altogether! In their words, "Why should we pay to raise a child who can't even use chakra, never mind use any of the hereditary Hyūga abilities? The orphanage will provide."

She hadn't even known about the disastrous effect of her unexplained body swap on her chakra coils until that moment, thanks to the Hokage's desire to not dump too many shocks on her at a time. A pity the Elders hadn't cared for such niceties. Despite her father's best efforts, the only reason she'd escaped the Caged Bird seal was that she no longer had a chakra system for it to do anything to, which would render applying it a waste of time. Some silver lining _that_ was.

She suddenly realized that not even her Naruto-kun would recognize her as she was now, and began to cry even harder. She was now nameless, homeless, and no one who might have been willing to help her would even know who she was!

Stressed beyond what any nearly-twelve-year-old should be expected to bear, she fell into an exhausted sleep, slumped against the wall behind the cot. Tears continued to flow even in her tormented slumber.

She never heard the commotion outside. Naruto's best and perhaps only true friend had passed out in front of him and been taken to the infirmary, with no explanation ultimately forthcoming, and no stupid chūnin guard was going to stop him from visiting her! Just as soon as he got himself untied again…

* * *

The Joketsuzoku Elders had thanked the Guide and sent him home to his daughter, who was really a bit young to be on her own for too long. After watching Ranma easily dominate several friendly spars and then — due mainly to Hinata's influence — not be obnoxious about his superiority, the Elders had promised to see the two boys safely on their way in the Guide's stead, invoking an ancient part of the Outsider Laws concerning hospitality to allied travellers. Of course, this meant the boys would need to be allies of the tribe — which, since one of them had been honoured with a girl curse, was easily possible. It seemed a win-win solution, as far as the Elders were concerned. Boys as skilled as the two at their young ages would probably become formidable fighters over the next few years, and it only made sense to ally such strength with the tribe. If either or both of the two could be induced to marry their bloodlines into the tribe outright, so much the better.

About the criminal panda no promises were made, nor asked.

Ranma carried the tiny lapine in her cleavage back to the small guesthouse they'd been lent, still steamed at her father. _An arranged marriage⁈ To some old crony's daughter. Gaaaah. With Pops' track record, she'll probably turn out to really be a male cross-dresser or something. Heh, it sure was funny when he got picked up from a bar by that girly-lookin' guy in drag. I dunno what all they did together before he figured it out, but he didn't dare get sloshed for nearly two months after that. Kept waking up screaming, too,_ she thought with an evil grin. It had been well worth the interrupted sleep.

"Aaahhh, what a relief," boy-Ranma said happily, luxuriating in front of the woodstove after pouring a cup of hot water over his head. He gave the tiny long-eared ball of fluff on the other chair a funny look. "How come you haven't changed back?"

The leveret gave him an innocent look and affected not to understand the question.

"Bah. I'm going to start calling you Ryoga-Ohki if you don't spend more time human when you can."

Ryoga looked offended, and tried to retort with a suitable sound effect. Unfortunately, the most human-audible noise the average rabbit ever makes is a kind of hissing sound, and he just wasn't able to coax a "Miyah!" out of his underdeveloped vocal cords. After he thought about it some more, he decided it was probably just as well; if he accidentally sent Ranma, who'd never specified what it would take to do so, into the Cat-Fist while Ryoga had the body of a baby animal, the guy would probably try to lick him clean as though he were a kitten. He shuddered with revulsion, and decided maybe changing back would be a good idea after all.

Ranma watched as the bunny apparently had a minor coughing fit, looked disturbed for some reason, and then pulled a tiny scrap of index card out of… somewhere. He squinted. It read HOT WATER in very wobbly little kanji. "Heh. Figured out Pops' sign trick already? That was quick. Sucks that babies are so uncoördinated, eh?" He snickered at the leveret's cute little Glare of Death and said, "Okay, okay, keep your fur on. Here." He held out a cup of water he'd had waiting on the woodstove, and tipped it over the rabbit's head once Ryoga was sitting straight.

They'd found out early on that changing back in the wrong position was uncomfortable at best, and at worst… Well, neither of them EVER wanted to be reminded of the time Ryoga had accidentally encountered hot water — and where had it come from, anyway? it certainly hadn't been Ranma or the Guide — while dozing face-down in girl-Ranma's cleavage, worn out from putting on a tooth-rotting display of "cute" for the Guide's little daughter Plum.

Fortunately, Plum had still been in the other room when things went haywire. Ryoga's sudden expansion had blocked the remaining water from reaching Ranma as he erupted butt first from the shredded remains of her undershirt, shoving her backwards. The shocked pair ended up with a nude Ryoga straddling a topless Ranma on the floor, Ryoga's fully activated wedding tackle jutting towards her horrified face from the midst of her flushed bosom, as he supported himself with his hands to either side of her head. They'd both screamed like little girls, and scrambled away from one another so quickly it had resembled teleportation.

They were still a bit miffed at the Guide for _laughing_ like that.

* * *

Back in his office, Sarutobi frowned thoughtfully at his scrying globe. It appeared the news of young Hinata's misfortune had already leaked throughout the better-connected parts of Konoha, thanks to the Hyūga Elders' ostentatious behaviour whenever they considered themselves to be on official business, such as their visit to the Academy. Ironically, the rumours were spreading all the faster because everyone liked to see the white-eyed snobs get taken down a peg occasionally. The poor child would soon be almost as much a pariah as her friend Naruto if he didn't do something to help her.

After some thought, he wrote out a lengthy order, and dispatched it to the Academy by genin messenger. The example of Rock Lee showed that one did not need functioning chakra coils to be an effective ninja. Hinata would be given a chance, but it would be up to her to succeed.

On a whim, Sarutobi indulged himself with a momentary look in on Naruto before getting back to his endless paperwork. _Oh, this ought to be good…_ he chuckled inwardly. _I wonder how he managed THAT?_

* * *

The chūnin assigned to guard the infirmary from snoopers gave a bored glance towards the corner where he'd dumped the demon brat. _What the—!_ The cocoon of summoned ropes, still tied together, was completely flat. The ropes were empty! "How the hell'd he do that?" Everyone knew the brat was a lousy ninja — his only working ninja ability was the illusion technique, Transformation. There was no possible way he'd secretly learned to perform a Body Replacement, and even if he had, there wasn't anything he could have swapped with tied up in his place.

Behind the confused chūnin, who was busy verifying the integrity of the ropes, the insect-sized figure of Naruto calmly (well, for him anyway) squeezed himself through the gap under the infirmary door. No one had ever noticed that his Transformation was not illusory, and he was blissfully unaware that what he'd just done should have been impossible. "Heh! Suck on that, dumbass!" the tiny figure squeaked triumphantly, once he was through. With a handseal, he released the Transformation and poofed back to his normal size in a cloud of smoke.

_Huh? Where's Hinata-chan?_ Now that he could see over the furniture, he was baffled to discover that the only patient in the room was some purple-haired girl he'd never seen, though she was dressed quite a bit like Hinata. She looked about ten or so. Had she just started the Academy? Naruto had never heard of someone starting this late in the year.

Looking around in bewilderment, he walked over to look more closely at the slumped figure. _Hey, she's crying in her sleep!_ Naruto didn't know what to make of that. _Wait a sec here. Those aren't just LIKE Hinata-chan's clothes, I think they ARE them! She's too small for them, and… what's this…?_ Naruto squinted at the girl's face. She had a face just like Hinata's, too, apart from a slightly warmer complexion. Somehow he didn't think this was the bratty little sister Hinata had occasionally mentioned. Naruto was beginning to sense that something was very wrong here.

Lacking any better idea, Naruto reached out and took one of the girl's hands. "Uh, hello?" he essayed. He was surprised to note that her tears had lessened at the sound of his voice. Taking a wild guess, he asked, "Hinata-chan? Is that you?"

The girl's eyes popped open in astonishment. _Naruto-kun⁈_

Naruto felt an icy hand grip his heart. _Those aren't Hinata-chan's eyes—!_

_He recognized me! I shouldn't have doubted him. He must like me as much as I like him!_ "Oh, Naruto-kun! It's horrible!" She hurled herself gratefully into the bewildered boy's arms, sobbing her heart out.

Tentatively, he put his arms around her, hoping he was doing it right. This was the first time anyone had voluntarily hugged him that he could remember — Hinata had always been far too shy to actually touch him except during sparring, and he understandably hadn't picked up on the fact that she very much wanted to. This girl didn't sound quite right, either, but she seemed to be acting like he was a close friend of hers, which only Hinata could say. Going out on a limb, he asked, "Hinata-chan? What's **happened** to you⁈"

She just sobbed louder for a few minutes, but knowing he deserved an explanation, eventually managed to choke out the salient parts. "Somehow I, I got turned into a little non-Hyūga girl, and, and, and not even Hokage-sama knows why, and— and the Elders disowned me just 'cause I can't mould chakra any more! I don't have a, a _family_ any more… or a home, they said something about an orphanage…" She broke down again.

Naruto's horrified expression slowly changed to something much uglier. _How could any family throw away their own daughter like that? That's just plain evil! And Hinata-chan's so nice to everyone, too. Those Hyūga are monsters! Hinata-chan, be sent to the Orphanage? I wouldn't send a DOG to that place! But what can I do about it?_ He thought hard for a moment.

_I am SO going to prank them. They deserve the nastiest tricks I can come up with, too. The snooty bastards won't take her back any time soon, though, no matter how sorry I make them; they're too proud. Too bad she can't just stay with me._ Naruto blinked and went wall-eyed for a moment. _…Hmmmm. I'm going to need a bigger allowance from the Old Man. A friend as nice as Hinata-chan deserves to have the GOOD ramen._ His mind made up, he pulled back a bit and tried to look at Hinata's new face. It was going to take some getting used to, her having normal eyes now.

"N-naruto-kun?" she asked worriedly. She sounded very small and unsure of herself.

His heart twisted, and he vowed then and there to do whatever it took to make her smile again. She was his most precious person, even more than Old Man Ichiraku and his daughter at their ramen stand, or Old Man Hokage. He didn't think of her in a romantic way, for he _was_ only twelve, but she was the best friend he'd ever had. "Hinata-chan? How'd you like to come live with me instead of going to the Orphanage? I know one kid doesn't make for much of a family, but it's better than nothing."

Hinata looked utterly blank, her mind shutting down in shock. She stopped sobbing — and, as far as Naruto could tell, breathing. _Naruto-kun wants me to be in his family, with a child…⁉_

"Hinata-chan…?" Naruto, of course, had meant himself when he said "one kid," and couldn't predict her line of reasoning at all.

She scared the socks off him by screaming, "YES! YES! Oh, Naru-chan, of course I'll marry you and bear your children!" and latching onto his neck like a barnacle, her legs wrapping tightly around his waist. Her dream was coming true in the midst of a waking nightmare!

Naruto went chalk-white and stiff as a board, his eyes bulging. _MARRY⁈ CHILDREN⁈_

* * *

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* * *

END PART TWO

_Latest revision as of Sat. 2010/07/17_

Author's note (Fri. 2010/04/02):

I have always found a great amount of contradictory and/or unclear data floating around on precisely what the words are for the various places, people, and cursed springs the Ranma characters encounter in China. By the time I wrote Chapter Three of this story, I had gotten fed up with the whole business, so I looked up the original ideographs myself. The following is the result of that analysis as applicable to this chapter. The Mandarin romanization is in Pinyin, which has drastically different pronunciation rules than English does. The Japanese reading is how a Japanese reader would interpret the Chinese hanzi — the Japanese-language pronunciations of the equivalent Japanese kanji are utterly and totally unrelated, even though the kanji and the traditional forms of the hanzi look almost identical.

• 女傑族 — Nǚjiézú in Mandarin; Joketsuzoku to a Japanese reader. Means something like "Woman Greatness Tribe" or "Female Hero Tribe." Viz translated it as "Chinese Amazons," which is accurate in spirit but somewhat misleading with regards to historical context.


	4. Chapter 3

**The Disorderly Princess and the Fiery Steed**

A Naruto / Ranma ½ crossover  
© 2009–10 by gsteemso

Chapter Three

Not my characters. Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi, a man who appears to really hate his own characters, and Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

* * *

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* * *

_Joketsuzoku village, northwestern China:_

Ranma and Ryoga — rested up a bit and, for a wonder, both still in human male form — walked out of the guest hut they were staying in and headed over to the training grounds they'd been shown earlier. Ranma was eagerly looking for the few warriors he'd previously gotten acquainted with while sparring. Oddly, most of them were female. He supposed it only made sense when the villagers called themselves members of the "Hero Women Tribe," but it was still very different than what the boys had encountered in the rest of China — whatever the Communists' official line about equality between the sexes, girls were still often subtly discouraged from studying the most advanced levels of the martial arts.

Fortunately for Ranma's sanity, none of the boys he'd met as a girl had worked up the nerve to officially challenge her for her hand in marriage before she'd returned to the guesthouse, though several had seriously considered it until they saw her skill level. As he approached the training field once again, this time with Ryoga following under his own power rather than riding in Ranma's shirt, the Japanese boys were still blissfully unaware of that particular aspect of the Outsider Laws.

One of the aspiring warriors, watching from the other side of the spar currently in progress, caught sight of the boys past the two girls locked in combat and pointed them out to the others near her. Just then, the taller of the two combatants won the sparring match, and all the teens turned to face the two Japanese travellers. The tall girl, moderately annoyed at not being the focus of attention in her moment of victory, disdainfully asked, "Who the heck are you **boys**?" in the local dialect.

"I Ryoga. That Ranma, was red hair girl before. Curse," answered the Lost Boy nervously in his pidgin Mandarin, pointing as he spoke. About a quarter of the faces lit up in recognition, and the group subtly relaxed a bit as the boys finished walking up to them. Almost everyone was giving them evaluating looks, whether to establish their likely skill levels or to gauge their attractiveness — Outsiders seldom came to Joketsuzoku at all, let alone highly skilled fighters from a land beyond the other end of China, which might as well have been further than the Moon for all the local youths knew of it. Everyone wanted to know more about this handsome and exotic duo.

One of the girls rattled something off too quickly for either boy to catch. Seeing their confused expressions, a tall boy with white robes and astonishingly thick glasses sighed and spoke up in, unexpectedly, Japanese. "I'm Mousse, I will translate. She wants to know where you were when Ranma-san was here sparring in her natural form, earlier," he explained. "The three girls hiding behind her want to know if you're a fighter too. They think you're cute… feh, go figure girls."

Ryoga glared at Mousse for that last crack, before the preceding phrase sank in and he blushed bright red, growing a goofy smile. "R-really?" he asked nervously. "Well, yeah, I've been training with Ranma for about three months now, as we travelled here on foot from Tokyo. We're about evenly matched."

Even before Mousse could relay that, the three girls at the back of the group got all giggly and started whispering excitedly to one another at his reaction. Ryoga was the Joketsuzoku equivalent of a demure, blushing maiden, and more girls than just those who'd asked about him were eagerly anticipating relieving him of some of that pesky innocence. The fact the Outsider girl with the boy curse hadn't done it as they travelled made it unlikely she would object on the basis of a prior claim, and if she swung _that_ way… Well, her boy form would make a passable second husband, right? And she'd been friendly enough to be tolerable as a mere adopted sister if she got **really** fussy about things. Outsiders were said to be odd that way.

Ranma snorted. "In your dreams, rabbit boy!" He faced the girl who'd originally spoken up. "He was the little bunny I had that kid there—" here he pointed at a short, runny-nosed, seven or eight year old boy, who had been watching the training with no small amount of hero worship — "hold on to while I sparred." Unnoticed, Ryoga winced at the memory of the little boy's distressingly sticky hands.

There was a pause while Mousse translated. Several of the gathered teens developed disappointed or thoughtful expressions, and one of them hesitantly queried through Mousse, "Um, didn't you pull him out of your cleavage? Is he your…?" Mousse made a gesture with two fingers twisted together as he relayed the question.

Ranma blanched. "It's NOT LIKE THAT!" he shouted indignantly, glaring at what he considered offensively peculiar expressions all around himself. "I ain't got anyplace else to carry him where he's gonna stay dry and not get squished! You saw how tiny he is when he's like that!" He shot a dirty look sideways at Ryoga, whose nervous body language was unsettlingly like that of a twelve-year-old boy with a massive crush on a hot 16-year-old. "Dammit, Rabbit Boy, quit that! You know damn well I ain't really—"

"And I'm not a rabbit! Stop calling me that!" Ryoga cut him off. His blush faded and he unconsciously began to move more easily, as hormone-soaked, ear-burning embarrassment swiftly transmuted into foul-humoured irritation. "We never did finish that spar your dad interrupted! Damn curse…" He forced himself back on topic. "You, me, that circle, now! Loser has to do the winner's laundry for the next week!"

"You're on, bunny-pervert!" Ranma cracked his neck, limbering up as he walked, and leapt out of the crowd into the practice ring marked on the grass. A cheer went up at this, even before Mousse finished translating; that the two Japanese curse victims were about to work out some annoyance in an all-out spar was pretty clear to everyone, though most of the gathered teens were a bit puzzled at Ranma's vehemence in rejecting the love of her travelling companion. Surely she felt **something** for him, to carry his cursed form where she did…

Unless…?

About a quarter of the gathered teenagers, mainly those furthest from the practice circle, looked at one another with horror or astonishment, even as the rest dropped everything in favour of watching the grudge match. Surely she wasn't into _bestiality?_ Ick!

Then another hypothesis was proposed, to general relief. Obviously the helpless bunny form of her, apparently, vassal — for why else would she be so upset at the idea of bedding him? — had hyperstimulated the redheaded girl's already strong maternal instincts, which everyone knew could be hard to indulge while on a lonely training journey, away from society. A strong, healthy girl and her highly attractive retainer, all alone on the trail for three months? The temptation must have been horrendous! This explanation was so obviously the right one that their collective respect for her went up several notches.

The "boys" having gotten the staredown phase over with during this discussion, the battle was joined, and everyone forgot their fascinating speculations on the Outsiders' true relationship in face of the impressive display of martial expertise before them. The Joketsuzoku training regime produced fighters with extreme physical strength, regardless of inherent skill; but an over-reliance by the Elders on special attacks, the lack of many other fighters of any skill in the area for the average tribespeople to test themselves against, and the village's extreme isolation had tended to act against the Joketsuzoku acquiring that many advancements in pure, basic fighting technique unless they developed them independently. Very roughly a fifth of the gathered youths could match or exceed Ranma or even Ryoga in raw strength, but none of them had mastered and integrated anywhere near as many base styles as Ranma.

Unnoticed, in the background, a pair of shrivelled old women looked at one another and nodded decisively. The Council of Elders' preliminary assessment had just been decisively confirmed; these two would make fine additions to the tribe. "Go, please, and alert the Lore Mistress that we will indeed be going ahead with the Rite of Alliance," the elder Elder said to the younger one.

Unfortunately, neither of them had noticed the teens' mistaken assumption as to which of Ranma's forms was the result of his curse.

* * *

_Uzumaki Naruto's apartment, Konoha:_

Naruto staggered into his kitchen through his front door, absently pointing Hinata towards the toilet off of the short hallway to their right. His mind was a whirl of confusion, which hadn't appreciably cleared since the pair of them had escaped the Ninja Academy infirmary. He kept remembering that he needed to go see Old Man Hokage to get a bigger food allowance, only to have the thought driven from his head by the traumatic memory of his best friend suddenly doing something even more bizarre and upsetting than sprouting fangs and threatening to cook him as dinner. She seemed to think he'd asked her to marry him, and she kept going on about having his kids and being the perfect wife for him!

Even to a normal twelve-year-old boy, the concept of unexpectedly finding himself affianced, with the spectre of fathering children looming in the middle distance, would have been a bit horrifying. To a child like Naruto, who — while quite independent — was only that way due to necessity, it was nearly inconceivable. When Naruto, in the lonely pit of the night, gave in and fantasized about having a real family, he still thought in terms of having actual parents; or at least a sibling or two, so he'd have somebody to play with who couldn't be told to stay away from him for no obvious reason. It had never yet occurred to him that he might some day want a girlfriend, and now he was somehow supposed to marry his best buddy?

He shuddered. No matter how many times the concept rattled around in his head it didn't get any more tractable.

He was quite relieved when Hinata came back into the kitchen and started chattering effusively.

"Oh, Naru-chan, it's wonderful! Thank you so much for giving me a new life after…" She trailed off abruptly, her new eyes going unfocussed as she was abruptly grounded again by the reality of her family's betrayal. She seemed to shrink into herself a bit.

Naruto didn't know what he was supposed to do with this whole "marriage" thing, but he knew what to do when a friend was hurting.

Precisely what he knew about it would have come as a shock to anyone who didn't know how socially isolated he was, but no one could fault him for effort. "Hey, hey, Hinata-chan, you still got me! And tomorrow we'll go prank those stuck-up bastards, you betcha! They'll be sorry for kicking out someone as awesome as you! We'll be all, 'Nyah, nyah, you guys are losers!' and stuff, bleeeeah!" — at which point, he stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry with his eyes crossed.

Hinata looked flabbergasted, and found the corners of her mouth twitching upwards despite her despair. After a moment she pulled herself together a bit, and managed to say, "Uh, I guess…" She paused, then pushed ahead: "Naru-chan? Is there a sink with a mirror? I, I've been crying a lot today…"

Naruto looked nervous. Crying girls were something largely beyond his experience, beyond the unhappy certainty left over from his childhood that he would most likely be blamed for it. Her request showed him the way forward, though. "Tell you what, Hinata-chan, I bet a hot bath would make you feel loads better! I got a real furo in the bathroom, and there's enough oil in the heater for you to have a good long soak!"

Hinata blinked. That did sound tempting. "Thank you, Naru-chan. I'd like that. Can you show me?"

* * *

The village of the Hero Women Tribe was abustle with activity and excitement. Joketsuzoku was so remote and seldom-visited that the Rite of Alliance — specifically, the full version for initiating a new pact, rather than the almost perfunctory form for renewing an old one — had not been called for in almost sixty years, and only three of the current Elders even knew how it was supposed to go with any degree of certainty. An improvised class on the subject was being taught in the council hall, with as many of the regular tribeswomen watching the Elders review the ritual as could fit in the room; this was an important part of their heritage, after all.

Two other reasons for the undercurrent of excitement included the exotic pair of Outsiders currently at the practice grounds, who had dazzled everyone present with their extensive martial skills; and the greedy panda-Outsider who'd arrived at the same time, who was about to be sentenced for twin crimes — namely, insulting the tribe, and carelessly inflicting a potentially lethal Jusenkyo curse on one of the two younger Outsiders.

Given that there were only fourteen Elders in the whole village, all of this meant they were stretched rather thin. A minimal tribunal of three, including one of those who already knew the Rite of Alliance, had been assigned to Genma's hearing. The remaining eleven Elders, needing to focus on learning the relevant ceremony, had deputized a respected mother of three warriors to keep an eye on the training area and prevent Ranma and Ryoga from running afoul of the Outsider Laws.

She had already had to prevent seven formal marriage challenges, to widespread confusion — after the first one, almost everyone except the boys themselves knew they were to be inducted as tribal allies and therefore had diplomatic immunity from the Marriage Laws, so why did so many foolish young warriors keep trying to formally challenge them? She didn't even want to **know** why those three boys had wanted to try their luck challenging Ranma's girl form. Surely they knew it was only a curse-imposed shapeshift? _Ancestors save us all from horny teenagers!_ she thought with a groan, massaging her forehead tiredly, and made a mental note to check with the Lore Mistress' apprentices that Jusenkyo was still being covered in the children's lessons.

* * *

Hinata's terrified scream ripped through the apartment as she stepped into the soaker tub and her body unexpectedly **changed**. _Not again!_ she gibbered to herself, before registering her body's new appearance.

It looked unexpectedly familiar. _Can this be…?_ she thought in stunned disbelief.

Just then, the door banged open, as a highly motivated Naruto — in full-on "protecting his precious people" mode and inexpertly brandishing a kunai in each hand — came skidding to a halt in the middle of the bathroom floor. His eyes roved frantically around the room, seeking the attacker that had made his friend scream, before he suddenly registered the details of her gloriously blue-haired head and startling White Eyes as she stood, looking at herself with shock, in the bath. "H-hinata-chan—! You're YOU again!" he burst out joyously, dropping the two kunai and taking a further step towards her, starting to reach out to hug her before his brain caught up with his location and he realized she wasn't wearing anything.

Naruto wasn't terribly well socialized, but he knew a situation like this couldn't possibly end well — boy plus naked girl? _Oh crap. She's gonna hit me._ He figured this was especially likely since the room was so small that he was now standing right next to her, separated only by the relatively thin thigh-high lip of the tub, and well within her personal space. He stared into her newly restored featureless eyes like a deer caught in the high beams of a fully laden logging truck plummeting at 80 km/h down a precipitous mountain road, his smile becoming fixed and rather strained.

Hinata, on the other hand, had had so many emotional shocks in the past two hours that she hadn't quite caught that far up with events yet. "Naru-chan! I'm back again! Oh, what a relief!" Grinning from ear to ear, she leaned the rest of the short distance towards her wonderful fiancé and hugged him joyously.

**Squish.**

Naruto's eyes bugged as he felt Hinata's barely developing but inescapably present female assets pressing against his chest, and for the first time in his young life knew what having lascivious thoughts felt like.

Strangely, it wasn't at all bad.

Hinata had clued in to the nudity problem when she felt his body against her own in rather more detail than she was expecting from her hug, and let go with a startled "Eep!" She dropped to a seated position in the tub, blessing the hot water for what little concealment it offered, and looked with horror to Naruto. _What must he think of me? I'm not that kind of girl!_ She blinked. "Uuhh… Naruto-kun—?" _Where'd he go?_

"Whoa…" came a faint but unmistakably awed voice from somewhere below the lip of the tub.

Hinata cautiously leaned forward, compelled by a morbid need to know, and peered warily over the wall of the tub.

Naruto was slumped bonelessly on his back in the middle of the tiny room's floor, a silly grin on his face, and was staring vacantly at the ceiling. "Soft…" he mumbled dazedly.

Hinata stared. _He did that because I hugged him? Wow._ She felt… proud, for some reason, though she would never have admitted it if asked.

After a moment the absurdity of the situation struck her, and although she covered her mouth to try and hold it in, she couldn't keep from giggling at him, at herself, and at the whole ludicrous day. Naruto soon roused enough to notice the sound, and realized she was watching him. After a moment of conflicted emotions flowing across his face, he broke out into a sheepish grin and joined her in chuckling.

The tension dispelled, they smiled at each other and Hinata leaned back to a regular sitting position, modestly folding her arms over her chest below the waterline, as Naruto clambered to his feet.

"Er, I'm glad you're better now, Hinata-chan," he said with a shy smile, scratching the back of his neck with one hand.

"I'm glad you were here for me, even if that hug was really embarrassing," she said, equally shyly, feeling a complicated stew of emotions and not really sure what to think.

"Eh, I guess it was kinda embarrassing, but it was really nice, too," Naruto confessed in a low voice, staring down at the wall of the tub so he wouldn't have to see her be offended by his perviness.

The two sat and stood, respectively, in red-faced silence for a time. Neither was willing to disturb the moment by moving or speaking. Finally, Hinata dispelled the tension by coughing theatrically and saying, "Well, I really ought to finish my bath before the water gets cold. Do you have a housecoat I can borrow? The one I used at my—" she choked up for a moment, the fresh emotional wound reopening — "old family's compound wasn't mine, it was part of the bath set, like the towels."

"Sure sure sure! I'll get it Hinata-chan!" If Naruto were honest with himself — on this occasion, he wasn't — he was actually a bit relieved to escape the unfamiliar kind of tension he felt in the close atmosphere of the tiny washroom. He bounced out the door, closing it carefully behind himself.

As he dug haphazardly through the layer of clothes he didn't use very often in the bottom of the bins under his bed, Naruto was trying very hard not to think of the glorious sight of his Hina-chan — and wasn't **that** a bizarre way to think of your best friend? — standing there nude, and then _hugging_ him nude—! He kept bursting out into dirty-minded giggling, then looking around in horror, hoping no one had noticed. Fortunately, the apartment remained free of jeering crowds.

"Aha! Got you!" He held up an extremely rumpled, orange and purple striped bathrobe that was about three sizes too small for either himself or Hinata, and frowned. "Well nuts."

* * *

Saotome Genma shook his head groggily, and looked around in alarm. How had he come to be asleep? The last thing he remembered, he was sitting alone in the heavy iron cage those evil old women were holding him in.

He was greatly dismayed to find himself manacled hand and foot to a stone seat in a windowless stone room, two hulking female guards with polearms and swords standing watchfully behind him… just out of reach, even if he'd had his hands free. Damn. In front of him were three more of the horrifically shrivelled old women — he wasn't sure, but he didn't think he'd dealt with any of these three yet — and off to his left was a small table with a huge, ancient, leather-bound record book on it, with a mousy young girl in glasses poised ready to write in it. Presumably a court recorder or some such, then. The claustrophobic room was relatively well-lit by a few oil lamps spaced strategically around the walls. It smelled like they were burning some sort of animal byproduct.

"The prisoner is now aware of the proceedings," one of the three sour-faced old crones said in the village dialect, interrupting his frantic inspection of possible escape routes. "Clerk Hairbrush, please read the relevant facts from the Book of Records."

Genma was annoyed to realize that they weren't even going to translate what was going on for him. That wasn't a good sign.

"Outsider Saotome Genma stands convicted of one count of second-degree Mortal Insult to the Tribe and one count of Criminal Negligence Causing a Category Four Cursing," read out the mousy clerk. With some effort, she turned a few hundred pages back to a bookmarked section on the Laws. "Standard punishment for the first crime is death or enslavement, and for the second is an equal cursing. However, even if the capital sentence is commuted, the prisoner already has at least one curse. There is also a very moving petition for lenience by Tribal Ally Candidate Saotome Ranma, a junior warrior in good standing, on the basis that the offender is her only known family." She looked up from the enormous ledger and nodded at the senior Elder in the room.

"Thank you. The last two items are the only ones that impact our decision, I think. Setting aside the clemency petition for the moment, it seems to me that the existing curse or curses could be of great concern in this case."

"Agreed," spoke up a second Elder. "There are two issues posed by said curse or curses. One, people bearing curses make poor neighbours due to metaphysical contamination of their surroundings, arguing against commutation of the capital penalty. Two, the fact the miscreant is already under a Jusenkyo curse implies that the gods are already punishing him for some other flaw in his character. If we replace that curse with the one he carelessly inflicted on another, we risk the displeasure of the gods." The other five Joketsuzoku present all nodded solemnly. Living near a place like Jusenkyo tended to disabuse one of skepticism in higher powers. "Hairbrush, could you refresh our memories of the precedent?"

The clerk turned laboriously to a still different part of the Book and began skimming the collected legal precedents there.

Several minutes later, during which the uncomprehending Genma grew increasingly nervous, she found the example in question. "Here it is. A warrior with poor self-control fell in the Spring of Drowned Asura, and was re-cursed with the Spring of Drowned Mouse in the interest of public safety. Within a week, almost all of the local game animals migrated away. There was also a 'plague of ill luck,' whatever that means. The plague of ill luck ended, and the wild game returned, only when the asura curse was restored. The subject of the curse was sent into exile until she learnt better control of herself and when she did, the curse spontaneously dissipated." Hairbrush flipped the page. "Says here she was named matriarch of her family within a year of returning and made Elder within twenty."

After a contemplative moment, the third Elder mused, "Wouldn't killing him before he suffers the full effect of his existing curse also risk the disfavour of Heaven? I seem to recall some precedent, oh, about seven hundred years ago…" The three Elders swivelled to look inquiringly at Hairbrush again. There was a pause while she riffled through the ancient list of precedents, searching for the right time period.

"Found it. Case of the Outsider Hiānqùŋ, convicted in absentia of raping a woman who was a serf on his lands and killing her husband when he objected. She somehow escaped his fiefdom and came to us seeking justice. He fled our hunters through Jusenkyo, and was only caught because he fell in the Spring of Drowned Girl and had to evade his own soldiers. The sentencing panel ordered his death, over the protests of the victim, who wanted him handed over in girl form to his soldiers. All five panel members, plus nine uninvolved bystanders, were killed the next day, when a meteor struck the council hall less than an hour after the execution."

There was a thoughtful pause.

"I don't think that last one actually applies in this case," pointed out the second Elder. "In that case, the villain received his curse after the crime rather than before, and considering which curse he got, it looks like a clear-cut example of divine retribution. I believe the gods' objection was more to the sentencing panel thinking they knew better than Heaven than to the idea of executing cursed criminals in general."

"We'd still do well to heed that part about not overstepping our authority," observed the first Elder drily. "As to that first precedent, I'm not sure it applies either. The warrior in that case needed to learn the lesson of the Springs to become a greater asset to the tribe, but I cannot see that this Outsider is likely to ever be a net benefit to the Hero Women Tribe in any way at all, even if he does miraculously reform his character."

"Let's just ask him," suggested the third Elder. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Seeing her sister Elders' nods, she switched to Japanese. "Saotome Genma. Due solely to the heartfelt request of your honourable child, we are trying to find a legal means to spare your worthless life — and make no mistake, it is not going well for you thus far. What can you do or teach that could potentially benefit our people? Bear in mind that whatever you suggest will need to outweigh the substantial cost of feeding your greedy stomach while you remain among us, in addition to making reparation for your crimes."

Genma looked stunned. If they were having trouble finding a reason not to kill him, things were more severe than he'd thought. He had dismissed their previous indications of favouring capital punishment as exaggeration designed to—

He paused. Designed to do what, exactly? He'd already been found guilty.

They didn't need anything from him.

He eyed the three Elders nervously. _Except, apparently, a reason to let me live. Bless that boy!_ Despite Ranma's sudden explosion of angst-ridden teenage rebelliousness, the boy didn't want him dead. _Maybe I haven't screwed things up beyond redemption between us after all._ He'd had a lot of time over the last three months to ponder where things had gone wrong. Maybe if they let him live he could somehow fix things with his son. "Well, I wasn't exaggerating when I said I'd been training the boy in the Art for thirteen years. I am an accredited master of my school. I could help train your warriors, perhaps?"

The two guards bristled angrily at the suggestion that such a disreputable lowlife should have anything to do with teaching the village's impressionable young minds, but were quieted by a stern look from the Elders. The first Elder replied, "That has possibilities. From the gossip I heard on the way over here, your school focuses more on flexibility of skill than on raw strength and toughness, correct?"

"I suppose you could look at it that way, though we do quite a bit of body conditioning too. The key is adaptability, so one must be strong and tough enough to use whatever techniques are called for." Genma unconsciously sat straighter, entering what he considered his "wise teacher" mode.

The three Elders, each old enough to be his grandmother, were utterly unimpressed, but nodded in agreement with his point. They turned to one another and began a high-speed debate in the village dialect.

All Genma could do was wait.

* * *

Eventually, Hinata finished soaking. She'd managed to dry her tears at her family's betrayal, being determined not to be a burden on her fiancé. She was standing in front of Naruto's cracked mirror, examining herself critically. She had started with her hair and eyes, so familiar and yet so refreshing to see back again, and had moved on to her overall body shape. _You don't know what you've got until you lose it,_ she mused, cupping her chest and looking at the reflection of its modest profile thoughtfully. Sure, as an eleven-year-old, she didn't have much in the way of feminine curves, but she was enormously relieved not to be **completely** prepubescent any more. Few things are as annoying as reluctantly making all the mental adjustments needed to cope with puberty, only to suddenly and implausibly have the condition withdrawn.

She was interrupted by a timid knock at the washroom door. "Uh, Hinata-chan?" said Naruto diffidently, through the thin wooden panel. "I found the robe, but, well, I think it's kinda too small… I haven't worn it for ages."

Hinata blushed fiercely at being interrupted while examining herself, but managed to stammer, "Er, ah, thanks anyway, Naru-chan. I'm just, ah, drying off. Be out in a minute."

"Are you okay, Hina-chan? You sound kinda shaky."

Hinata was overcome with bliss for a moment. _He called me Hina-chan…_ She felt even more warmly towards him than she usually did. "Yes, Naru-chan, I'm doing wonderfully," she said happily, meaning every word.

"Oh good! There's a spare towel under the heater you can wrap up in, just come on through to the bedroom when you're done and we'll find you something to sleep in, okay?" Naruto was audibly relieved, which made Hinata's heart swell further. She wasn't sure she would need a ninja technique to walk on the ceiling just now.

* * *

Genma stood confidently in the middle of the Elders' private sparring circle, grimly eyeing the three purportedly dangerous old biddies arrayed around him. The example of the dreaded Master, whom he dared not actually name even in the privacy of his own thoughts, showed that shrivelled-up senior citizens could be extremely threatening sometimes, so he wasn't going to be complacent about this even if they were a bunch of old women.

"Saotome Genma, your performance in this challenge match will determine whether you live long enough to see the sun set in an hour," said one of them. "To pass the test, you must stay alive until we say you have succeeded, and you must also remain within the sparring circle at all times. Hold nothing back, for your life depends on it, even if you manage to avoid being killed in the course of the fight."

His face an expressionless mask, Genma stared confidently at the Elder who'd spoken, making sure to show no weakness… while simultaneously keeping his senses sharp where the two off to the sides behind him were concerned. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the Elder he was looking at subtly relaxed, just enough to mislead a less experienced fighter into thinking they weren't going to start quite yet… and he barely managed to dodge the leaping kick coming silently from behind his left flank.

_So fast!_ he gibbered, mentally winding his operating level up several notches even as he narrowly evaded the third Elder's equally stealthy strike. These old hags were individually faster than he was, and while he couldn't accurately judge their actual skills yet, it looked like even the horrible Master — may his tormented shade be molested by sweaty incubi for all eternity — would have had trouble fighting all three at once like this. "So! You leave me no alternative…" he intoned ominously, the evening sunlight glinting off his glasses, all of which was calculated to put the three old women on the defensive. He made some theatrical arm-limbering motions, and adopted a very odd stance—

The Elders' faces briefly registered shock as he either disappeared from or became insignificant to all their senses, and even the fact they could still technically see him wasn't much help with the speed he was suddenly moving — the Elders may have been faster, but like most high-level fighters, were unused to tracking a high-speed opponent who didn't register at all to their chi sense. However, you don't live to be that old in a place as intensely competitive and political as a small village of warrior women without learning to hide your thoughts, and the telltale expressions were gone almost before Genma even saw them. Quickly, one of the ancient fighters kicked the ground, releasing a precisely shaped surge of chi.

Genma barely kept silent as the ground erupted beneath him, the entire sparring circle suddenly being transformed into a hellish landscape of jagged, earthen spikes. Not missing a beat, he gathered an irregular subset of the freshly loosened dirt and rock into his unnoticed blanket — much to the Elders' bewilderment, as the spikes disappeared across a seemingly random patchwork of the sparring circle even as they heaved out of the ground.

The old women were catching flickers of movement all over the circle, but weren't quite able to stay focussed on him. They were unfazed, and unsheathed a variety of nasty-looking bladed weapons. In deference to the fact that they hoped to get something out of Genma if he passed their test, the blades were not poisoned, though they were happily aware that he didn't know that.

Recognizing the near certainty of their managing to tag him at any moment, probably with lethal results, Genma wasted no time and employed a trick loosely based on the finishing move of the Umi-sen-ken on the closest Elder. Such a manœuvre would normally have been doomed to failure, as wind resistance places firm limits on how fast a person can jump through the air — meaning that he should have been slowed enough for the three crones to get a better fix on his position and decisively counter his efforts. However, he stayed at ground level for added traction and switched from the Umi-sen-ken to the Yama-sen-ken as he launched himself, sacrificing stealth to blast the air out of his way with a full-body modification of the vacuum blade technique. Himself and everything in his blanket shot like a meteor across the short distance to his chosen target. For the briefest of moments, he and the jumble of earth he'd just whipped out of his ragged cloth were moving twice as fast as she was.

Naturally enough, she registered the supersonic approach of the blob of dirt and rocks as soon as it was launched, and with nanoseconds to spare, managed to make a startled evasion to the right. She wasn't expecting the sonic boom that accompanied it, though, and was just barely nudged out of the circle by the shockwave. It came as little consolation that the pile of debris was now out of play as well. Narrowing her eyes, she sheathed her sword with a sniff of disgust and stood back to observe the remainder of the fight, expecting it to be over pretty quickly now that the Outsider had revealed his trump card. Indeed, her two sister Elders had immediately whirled in a concerted dance of vicious weapon strikes through the annoying male's apparent position, expecting to get in a telling blow before he had time to recover from his all-or-nothing leap. Really, it seemed a foolish move for him to commit to when it only had any chance of taking a single Elder out of the fight.

The key word there was 'apparent' position. What none of the three realized was that he had, at the last moment, switched back to the Umi-sen-ken for stealth and launched himself straight back as the mass of earth had plunged forwards, adding to the momentum of its travel and distancing himself from the evidence of his passing in one simple manœuvre. The rapidly-collapsing modified vacuum blade at the leading edge of the debris ball acted as an excellent decoy to their chi senses, as well.

He took full advantage of the churned-up terrain to rebound towards a position in the circle that most people would have thought impossible relative to his starting point, kicking off from the spiky ground in such a way as to make a real mess of the dirt and distort the evidence of his movements. Seeing that they'd only been fooled for a moment and were now quartering the circle between them, a search manœuvre that was guaranteed to end in his decapitation at the speed they were bouncing around with those blades, he desperately lashed out with a modified Strike of the Spitting White Snake to catch an Elder by the non-knife-bearing arm as she flickered past.

Unfortunately for Genma, she detected him when he got in close. Suddenly there were seven of her, swirling dizzyingly around his position. His hand went uselessly through a Splitting Cat Hairs afterimage, even as his unobtrusive but all too visible body suddenly started to take inaccurate but still debilitatingly painful knife wounds and unarmed blows from, it seemed, every direction at once. She was too fast for him to land any return blows, though purely by good luck, he managed to shatter her knife blade as it flashed past his fingers. It had come frighteningly close to them. Unfortunately, he was already bleeding from several shallow cuts by then.

Losing her weapon didn't slow the elder down at all; she simply shifted styles and continued to pummel him with abandon.

He swore inwardly and, unable to escape the Elder's punishing assault as she shifted around the circle whenever he did, gambled on a sneaky move with the blanket. Alas, he caught only air, and with the second remaining Elder and her sword having joined in the attack by this point, the new evidence of his exact position was nearly his undoing. Only a desperate burst of vacuum blades cleared a way out for him, though they didn't hit anything more substantial than the hem of a robe. Worse, he had lost both his concentration on the Umi-sen-ken and his blanket by the time of his escape, returning to full visibility with large bruises and obvious but non–life-threatening cuts all over himself. His gi had been reduced to a slashed-up collection of rags, and was barely staying on him.

Rolling and flipping, he managed to propel himself into the air just in time to avoid a return salvo of much smaller vacuum blades from the two Elders, who had abandoned the Splitting Cat Hairs for the moment. "You already know that one? Shit."

The damned old baggages **smirked** at him! Genma had a moment's concern that Ranma's cursed form might smirk like that as the boy grew older, and shuddered. _Bad thoughts. Mind on the fight!_ With renewed determination, he crouched low and began firing small stones at his opponents with powerful flicks of his fingers, finding plenty of ammunition as he scuttled crablike across the spiky surface of the devastated sparring ring. In a way it was convenient that one of the two ancient terrors had flipped his blanket out of the ring, denying it to him, as he now had one hand free to flick rocks at each of them.

Unfortunately, even with a dense stream of unpredictably aimed rocks of varying sizes being launched at them at nearly crossbow bolt speeds, the Elders were still faster than him, especially as beat up and sore as he was. He was just glad they hadn't quite managed to tag his hands. With blades being used and as hard as they'd been hitting even empty-handed, he would have suffered multiple broken fingers, or worse. Even so, his left wrist was one of the loudest of the many, many body parts screaming at him.

Being faster, they'd soon managed to close with him again, and Genma knew the end was near. He grimaced, and prepared a desperation strike using the full power of the Yama-sen-ken. "HALT!" he shouted authoratively in Mandarin, having learned this single word of the language from all the shopkeepers, restauranteurs and policemen who'd shouted it after him as he crossed China. His chi-charged voice hit the rapidly approaching Elders with the force of a runaway freight train. He grimly pivoted and tried to perform one of the Yama-sen-ken's signature power strikes on each of the momentarily stunned old women at the same time; but their auras were at least as strong as his own, they were substantially more experienced and battle-hardened, there were two of them, and they had both more or less recovered from the chi-borne paralysis before he could actually strike them. As Genma frantically evaded their return blows by retreating under cover of a hail of rapidly-flicked pebbles, he realized he was about out of tricks. They hadn't even had to work to dodge the pebbles this time.

The two Elders, having his full measure now, closed in again. A knife-hand strike blurred in towards his neck from each side, and he realized he wasn't going to get out of the way in time! Only one option le—

Blackness.

* * *

Naruto turned to the towel-wrapped Hinata with a grin, holding up one of the few lightweight items of clothing he owned that was not even slightly orange. "I bet this'd work, Hina-chan, see? It goes with your hair!" He'd covertly observed enough people out shopping to know that coördinated colours were apparently important to girls. Precisely why was a bit of a mystery, but considering how cool orange was, he guessed there must be something to it.

Exhibit A was a traditional, full-length garment, which to the Western eyes of Ranma's world would have resembled a cross between a housecoat and a set of pyjamas, coloured a vivid cobalt blue with a crimson sash around the waist. The only other adornments were two thin, nine-armed spirals, one each on front and back, picked out in the same scarlet hue. Now that he came to look at it again, he felt guilty for not wearing it, even though he'd never been large enough to before. It had been a good-luck present from Sarutobi when Naruto was accepted into the Academy; the old man had told him that it should fit just right when he became a real ninja.

"It looks perfect, Naru-chan. I wonder if it will fit?" She accepted it from him and held it up against herself. "Looks like it does…" She looked meaningfully at him, trying to signal that she wanted a bit of privacy.

It went right over his head. "Great! Get dressed and we can go have some ramen for supper!" He waited expectantly.

"Um, you're supposed to leave the room when a girl changes, Naru-chan," she said tentatively.

He was astonished. "Really? Why?" It had never come up before. The last time Naruto had changed clothes in the presence of other people, back in his orphanage days, they'd all been small enough he couldn't remember anything much about the others. Had they all been other boys? Belatedly, he began shuffling towards the door in embarrassment.

Hinata blinked. One side of her forehead creased slightly. "…You know, I'm not sure," she admitted. That particular social norm had always been rather laxly adhered to in the Hyūga compound — the White Eyes were so useful, there were usually a fair number of clan members with them active at any given time; and since everyone using their White Eyes saw right through clothing anyway, whether a person was dressed only made much difference if there were non-Hyūga around or it was a cold day.

"Really? Huh. Go figure." Naruto shrugged and went to go start some water boiling for the ramen.

* * *

The entirety of Joketsuzoku's population, apart from the unlucky few on patrol duty, had gathered in the town square by the council hall. They waited eagerly as dusk approached, conversing quietly but with great excitement. On a roughly foot-high stone platform in front of the building, the Elders' assistants bustled back and forth, arranging elaborate torch sconces and other decorations to add to the festiveness and import of the upcoming ceremony.

Even Ranma's father was present, though he was kept fettered hand and foot, and made to stand at the very back of the crowd. He had, by the narrowest of margins, been permitted to remain among the living — but only on the condition that he teach all of the Art he could to those warriors, male and female, who were judged mature enough not to absorb socially disruptive prejudices from him. The Elders had almost been moved to reverse his stay of execution when he broke out the appallingly pathetic Crouch of the Wild Tiger in gratitude. Fortunately, if uncharacteristically, he'd realized when to shut up.

Just inside the door of the council hall, Ranma and Ryoga stood nervously to one side, trying not to fidget and mess up the fancy clothes they'd been lent. Well, Ryoga was, Ranma was just trying to avoid thinking at all of what he was wearing. He never would have gone along with this if he'd had a choice, but somehow the scarily enthusiastic woman who'd brought it over had gotten her way without ever actually arguing with him. It wasn't as if she'd been demanding or anything, more that she'd just sort of somehow not even noticed his increasingly frantic protests. "Stupid dress. Feh."

Ryoga, who had his own reasons for avoiding thinking of Ranma's appearance, carefully studied the wall next to him. He sought for something neutral to say, and almost succeeded. "Why do you suppose they insisted you be a girl for this, anyway?"

"Hell if I know. Maybe it's like a character test or something, see how well I stand being humiliated in public?"

"It could just be 'cause it makes 'em feel better. This is the Hero **Women** Tribe, after all."

"Could be. Still sucks. Stupid dress."

Absently, Ryoga turned to address her directly, and was immediately reminded why he was trying not to. If he was dressed to kill, she was dressed to slaughter, pillage and sow the ground with salt. His cheeks flaming, he whipped his head around to stare at the wall again, grateful in the extreme that Joketsuzoku formal wear for males was designed to conceal signs of arousal.

Ranma noticed the motion, drawing her momentarily out of her funk, and was immediately blasted back into it even deeper when she realized just what motion he'd actually made. _Gah, I look so stupid in this girly thing that Ryoga can't even look at me. Probably trying not to laugh, the bastard._

They stood and sulked, respectively, in silence a bit longer. Eventually a gap-toothed little girl bearing a sparkly toy sword over one shoulder, tremendously proud of herself for helping the grownups with such an important ceremony, came up and led them out onto the dais. Apparently things were as ready as they were going to be.

The two Japanese teens just wished she had let them go out without making them hold hands in a line behind her.

Ranma, who'd urgently needed to find a way to look at this that would allow her to stay halfway sane, had decided that they were challenging "him" to go through the ceremony while looking silly. Being Ranma, to wit, unable to turn down any challenge no matter how inane, she'd responded by standing as tall as the damn curse would allow, and striding proudly out to where they were apparently supposed to stand. _Hah! Takes more than a clown suit to take down a Saotome!_ She adamantly refused to contemplate what being forced to hold hands like a kindergartener with Ryoga and a little girl would do to her public image.

Ryoga followed stolidly along, focussing on not getting lost… no matter how badly he wanted to at the sight of Ranma's magnificent girl-backside, swaying enticingly along before him with every confident stride. He wanted to smack himself with his free hand, but didn't dare with so many people watching.

The crowd murmured approvingly. Now that was how a fine pair of allied warriors looked! Fearless and confident without being arrogant, and good with children, too.

An incredibly decrepit Elder in a litter was carried respectfully out to conduct the ceremony. She had previously been introduced to the two Japanese youths as the tribe's Lore Mistress, and they had been awed to learn she was over a hundred and forty years old. Mere age was the least of the reasons she was so revered, though — it had been quite obvious, even in their short meeting, that she still possessed a razor-sharp mind despite her advanced years, and the extent of her knowledge was simply staggering. In some respects, she'd known more even about a far-off place like Japan than either of the boys did! The conversation had been a very humbling experience, in more ways than one, and they could well understand why few people felt worthy to ask the old woman's actual name rather than simply addressing her by her title.

At an exaggerated ceremonial gesture from Eau-de-Toilette — the Elder in the fancy headdress, who was apparently head of the council, and would _ex officio_ be acting as the tribe's voice in the Rite of Alliance — everyone fell respectfully silent. The Lore Mistress began to chant in a thin and wavery, yet surprisingly carrying voice, ritually asking the blessings of the gods and the ancestors on this new alliance between the Hero Women Tribe and the two worthy young Outsiders. Their paths had been woven together by the strange powers of Jusenkyo, and they would take this new truth into their lives as had been done since time immemorial…

* * *

Naruto lay, ramrod-straight, at the extreme edge of his bed, and stared rigidly at the ceiling. One arm extended reluctantly off towards the rest of the bed, where it was held in a gentle but unbreakable grip by Hinata's slender hand as she slept peacefully, curled around it. For what felt like the thousandth time, Naruto reviewed the events of the evening, trying to figure out how he'd gotten into this mess. _Okay, so I gave Hinata-chan the bed and tried to sleep on the floor, but she kept waking up with horrible nightmares of being abandoned. She managed to sleep OK when I sat up with her, so we tried having her hold my hand as I reached up from the floor. When I fell asleep my arm would fall down and wake her up… so if we had to sleep at the same level, it'd be kinda silly to have a bed and both of us on the floor, so we're both in the bed… sleeping together. Why does that sound logical and really, really wrong at the same time?_

Naruto had never encountered the adult connotations of the phrase "sleeping together." That wasn't the problem. The thing was, Naruto had simply never felt secure sleeping around other people. The various ninja who'd been assigned to protect him from crazies when he was younger had always left him his space, and few other people had benevolent reasons for getting close to him as he slept. He might ordinarily have viewed Hinata as a safe exception, but he still had some degree of heebie-jeebies from her suddenly deciding they were engaged. Scary!

* * *

Ranma and Hinata dreamed. Almost as soon as they were both asleep, their minds synchronized, and where there were two there was now only one, albeit one with two perspectives.

_Thank goodness. I'm finally the whole **me** again._

_Yeah. What a crazy day it's been, too._ Memories unfolded in the space-that-wasn't around him/her. _See? If it hadn't happened to me, I'd never have believed it._

_It was like that on the other side, as well._ More memories swirled around him/her, at once fast as an eyeblink and slow as an unmotivated elephant.

_I see the connection is stronger than I'd ever have guessed. One side of me gets a curse, and the other gets it too! Creepy._ An icy sensation jittered up his/her spine.

_I guess in a way what happened to Hinata-me_ was _a side effect of the Great Spirit Reinforcing, even though the actual cause was the other side of me falling in an honest-to-gods cursed pool. Heh. Go figure._ Amusement rapidly faded to sorrow. _How could any family treat one another like that?_

Images flickered around him/her. Some were unpleasant memories from the Ranma side's training trip, of hellish, poverty-stricken places encountered along the way, which Genma had gotten them out of as quickly as possible. Others were even more unpleasant memories from the Hinata side's early life, of the contrast between what that family had been when his/her mother was still part of it and what it had rapidly become after the woman's untimely passing.

S/he wanted to think of happier things instead.

Fortunately, there was one handy. _Isn't it wonderful? Naru-chan asked Hinata-me to marry him today! I'm so happy!_ Joy washed through him/her. It made him/her feel like singing. _Shame neither of my singing voices are any good. I wonder if either of my cursed forms can sing?_

The concept that s/he was some day probably going to have relationships with both males and females at the same time, albeit in different universes, had taken quite a while to assimilate in all its young-mind-scarring totality, but both sides of him/her were now quite capable of separating mere whims of bodily preference from the core of what made him/her who s/he was. Naruto may have been a bit runty and more than a bit poorly socialized, but his heart was in the right place and he made the Hinata side almost deliriously happy. S/he didn't think s/he'd ever felt like that before, in either life. Really, what else could one — or two — ask for?

_Heh. Kinda funny that my younger half is going to get married before the older one._

Quiet laughter. _Not necessarily. Pops sure seemed set on Ranma-me marrying some girl back in Japan._

_Right… Still figure she's probably really a male crossdresser, or some other kind of pervert._ The thought was laden with cynicism.

* * *

In Japan, an itinerant okonomiyaki vendor passing through Yokohama and a largely self-taught dojo heir in the Tokyo suburbs both awoke suddenly with terrible fits of sneezing.

* * *

_Gods, I hope not. Having other halves of the opposite gender was confusing enough even before I got cursed. I don't even want to think about how bad having a perverted fiancée could make things._

_True. Odd that Pops never mentioned this 'Tendo daughter' thing except by accident. Did he honestly expect me to just blindly go along with it if he dropped it on me at the last minute?_ s/he marvelled with perplexed disdain.

A painful memory, of the absurdly self-important Hyūga Elders in full cry as they expelled him/her from the clan, wandered across the fringes of his/her mind. _Sometimes I wonder if there's something about leading a family that makes people go weird in the head._

_Nah. I think it only happens when there's no second parent around to balance out the silly parts._ Both halves of him/her could remember wistfully watching happy, normal families on public outings, from a sometimes dishearteningly short but always unbridgeable distance.

_That makes sense._ A vague memory of the Hinata side's mother, smiling, floated past. _It'd be nice if I could remember Ranma-me's mom, too. You'd think Pops would keep a picture, or that we'd have at least stopped by her grave a time or two._

_No point worrying about it now, I suppose._ Resignedly, s/he returned to more urgent matters. _The important thing is, what am I going to do about the Hyūga situation? They were wrong about me losing the White Eyes, but do I really want to go crawling back to people who'd treat me like that for something I had no power over?_

_Never mind that, what would they do if they found out about the curse? They'd probably slap the Caged Bird on Hinata-me before I could blink. Remember how pissed off they were when they found out it wouldn't have any effect on that side's cursed form._

_Damn, that's true. Maybe I should just stay with Naru-chan. I'm happier there than I have been in years. If I only go out in public in cursed form, no one would even need to know._

_What about the chakra problem? Can't graduate the Academy without using the standard E-ranked techniques, and can't be a ninja without graduating the Academy. I still don't get that. Why would the curse take away Hinata-me's chakra coils?_ Frustrated bewilderment.

_I've been thinking about that. I think it's got something to do with the link between my selves. It's pretty clear by now that no one in Ranma-me's world has any chakra, right? So not having chakra coils is probably normal there. And it turns out that side's cursed form mysteriously has white pupils no one can explain — just like Hinata-me's White Eyes. What if the curse got confused by the link, and made each of my cursed forms partly based on my other real body?_

_Hm. When Ranma-me wakes up I need to check if that girl form can do anything with chakra._ Possibilities opened up before him/her. _Heh, Bunny Boy would shit a brick if I pulled that out in a spar!_ Evil cackling.

_I shouldn't get ahead of myself. Still need to figure a way to be a ninja when I can't let anyone find out I can still use chakra._

_True. Hmm… Wait a minute, didn't cousin Neji say something last year about the other boy on his genin team? Stunted chakra coils, or something. Rock Lī, that was his name. How'd he graduate the Academy if he can't use chakra?_

_Dunno. Guess both of me have something to work on when I wake up tomorrow._

_Oh, right, this is a dream. That does explain the panda with the scratched-out headband._ S/he watched bemusedly as the panda-nin bounced away into the vague recesses of the dreamscape, gleefully chowing down on the stolen bamboo in its paws.

_Funny, I can't see Pops putting in enough effort to be a missing-nin, but it suits him somehow._

_I think his headband having the kanji for 'hungry' instead of a leaf is a bit over the top, though._

* * *

.

* * *

END PART THREE

_Latest revision as of Sun. 2010/07/18_

Thanks are due to all of my prereaders, including among many others the disparate groups of suspicious characters at the **Temple of Ranma's Senshi Seifuku** and **The Fanfiction Forum.** If anyone else wants to be a prereader, and can promise a turnaround time of less than a day per thousand words, I'd be very grateful — just drop me a line at «gsteemso（at）ficfan（dot）org». Thanks for reading!


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